


Something Sacred I Lost

by 1f_this_be_madness



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adam needs hugs always, Aftermath of Torture, Also for some reason I have Adam call himself 'Milligan' when he's trying to calm down, Bobby and Jody are a team, Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, But here it is, Canon divergence for Jump the Shark - because who needs ghouls?, Castiel is a Good Friend, Crowley is full of shit (but also a badass), Dealing with guilt and grief, Dean does some seriously screwed-up shit, Demon Dean Winchester, Don't ask me why, Dreams and Nightmares, Fallen Angel Castiel (Supernatural), Gen, Hallucinations, Lucifer (Supernatural) is a Little Shit, Sam is conflicted, Slightly altered universe, Spoilers through Season 5 Episode 20, Suicidal Thoughts, This is a story I never intended to write, descriptions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-02-08 08:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 56,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12860898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1f_this_be_madness/pseuds/1f_this_be_madness
Summary: Heaven has gone dark as the angels prepare for the Apocalypse and the demons rise out of Hell; but the vessels of Michael and Lucifer have other ideas. Sam Winchester decides it is better to be the Boy King than Lucifer's bitch, and Dean concurs. The hell with saying yes to Michael. Thus, both brothers decide to go Dark Side.And Castiel is unable to stop them.





	1. Chapter One.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this work is from a Billy Joel song entitled "The River of Dreams", and the idea came from several videos I saw on Youtube detailing Sam and Dean's exploits after going Dark Side. And some about the terrifying exploits of Team Free Will in general, because let's face it; they're pretty friggin' scary even when they're trying to do GOOD in the world.
> 
> "Angel With A Shotgun" by The Cab, "Burning Down The House" by Talking Heads, "Brothers In Arms" by Dire Straits, and "If You Want Blood (You've Got It)" by AC/DC were playing in my head -and in this story- as I wrote it.
> 
> Many thanks to my good friend Huhsuabee for her excellent advice and edits, especially regarding Lucifer and Adam.

THEN

Heaven has gone dark and Hell is empty as demons walk the Earth.

The angel Castiel has failed in his mandate.

First, he had disobeyed his direct orders from Heaven: to help cause the Apocalypse. He did not, but tried to stop it instead. He disobeyed, for the Winchesters.

And then he could not save them. Could not stop Sam from becoming the Boy King or Dean from refusing to leave his brother's side and becoming a demon as a result. Brothers protecting each other to, and past, the end.

So Cas was cast out of Heaven and Fell to Earth with no more orders and no idea what to do. The only thing on his mind, the words that keep repeating, over and over again: FIND THE WINCHESTERS. STILL YOU ARE BOUND TO THEM, THOUGH YOU COULD NOT SAVE - the angel cut off thought at that point. He had done this to himself and to them. Sam and Dean were corrupted on his watch, and so he must bear the blame even as he works to save them now. Castiel settles his shoulders and steels himself. The first thing he must do is discover where his friends would go. As demon and abomination, what would they do?

NOW

**A Warehouse. Night. ******

"Did ya get them?" the taller of the two figures asks. 

"'Course I did, Sammy. I'm a professional, remember? All the instruments of torture, right here." The shorter individual pats the surface of the long table in front of him, green eyes alight but cold. 

The taller one, Sammy, rolls his hazel eyes. "Jerk."

"Bitch," the other replies.

Turning, Sammy's nostrils flare as his gaze flashes black and he takes a deep breath. "All right, let's do it." He glances slowly down at a woman who is tied to the rearmost right leg of the long torture-instrument table. Her eyes are wide with terror and her cheek is bruised. A cut bleeds freely just beneath her left eye. She whimpers from behind a gag of rough cloth as the shorter man crouches down beside her.

"Don't sweat it, sweetheart," he purrs. "This'll be over soon." He pushes her hair back out of her face with incongruously gentle fingers and smiles in reassurance. Then he stands and faces the tall man again. "It's all you, little brother," clapping a hand on the other's shoulder. "Lemme know if she won't talk; I'll be outside."

"Okay. Thanks, Dean." 

The shorter man -Dean- saunters almost jauntily across the main floor of the warehouse. The woman's fearful eyes follow him as he exits the double doors and she flinches involuntarily as they BOOM shut. Her gaze flicks up immediately at the remaining brother afterward. "Now," this one says, features deceivingly gentle as he crouches down and puts a serrated knife, which he had pulled out of his jacket pocket, against her throat. "You're gonna tell me everything I need to know, okay? It'll be a lot easier if you cooperate. Trust me." He lets out a breath and smiles sympathetically. "My brother...well, let's just say he isn't as patient as me." He levels an open sincere gaze on her bruised and bloody face.

"Please," she whispers, voice cracking as she starts to tear up, "just let me go. I don't know anything, I swear..." she lets out a hiccuping sob and shakes her head back and forth violently, helplessly. "I don't know what you want..."

The tall man laughs, head thrown back in abandon, long brown hair falling against his shoulders. His teeth flash as they catch the streetlight coming in from the closest window, when before he had been standing in shadow. "Ah, hahaha, that's funny!" He wipes his eyes with mirth and then adds conversationally, getting right in her face with his tone soft and his eyes dangerous, "Now why don't I believe you?"

***

Dean slams the main doors shut and leans his back against them for a minute. Part of him is itching to get back in there and slam that bitch up against a wall, but Sam's got the knack for forceful exorcising; plus, this way he can be ready if she decides to be a dumbass and make a break for it.

Standing up and turning to face the double doors he'd just exited, Dean checks on his pistol, whipping it out of his waistband and cocking it. He hears the almost-silent fluttering and feels the _whoosh _of power behind him at exactly the same time. He settles his shoulders in response to a familiar gravelly, "Hello, Dean."__

“Wow, Cas,” the Winchester leisurely turns to see the disheveled angel staring him down. “You really do live in my ass, huh? How’s it goin’? You’re not lookin’ so good, man.” He takes in the other’s pained and seemingly tired expression, the dark hair that is even more tousled than usual, and the trench coat that looks as if someone had taken a blowtorch to it. Dean blinks and smacks his lips; gaze flickering ever-so-slightly as he closely studies the angel.

His friend’s expression is difficult for Castiel to interpret. He had become used to the nuances in Dean’s movements, the jumping of his jaw and subtle twitches of his lips and flickerings of emotions in his eyes, but something is different now. Dean’s expression is far more stone-like and still. Less human. It is disconcerting, to say the least. But Castiel perseveres and speaks “I…Fell from Heaven and have been across the United States in their entirety searching for you, Dean.”

Choosing to ignore the first part of that statement for the present, Dean sighs. “‘It’, Cas. The United States is one thing.”

“Oh. My apologies.” Castiel shuffles his feet and flicks his eyes downward and then back up to meet Dean’s. This is a typical conversation between the two of them, which is a relief. If Dean continues to make normal responses, dare he hope that—? 

And then Dean crosses his arms and says “Well, ya found me. What’s so important, huh?” No urgency, not an iota of concern fills Dean’s face. He jerks his head with a slight grin, but his eyes are not smiling and his voice is flat and cold. “Stoppin’ the Apocalypse is off the table now, right? ‘Cause me and Sam are strapped in.”

Cas swallows, his heart dropping. “Dean—”

“You know what, Cas?” Dean strides over quickly, two fingers coming up to stop the angel’s next words only a few inches from his face. “Screw this, okay? Heaven and Hell can _both _shove it—I don’t care. I’m stickin’ with Sammy.”__

__The angel closes his eyes in relief. “Then the rumours are untrue. You are not a demon.” No demon would be focused solely on protecting another being; it is not in their nature._ _

__But Dean rids Castiel of that momentary relief. “Oh, no, I am,” the Winchester says breezily, apple-green eyes flashing black and then back to green. “Sam’s usin’ his mojo again, so I gotta watch his back. Plus this ain’t much different from the way I was in Hell, is it? All the shit I did?” For a millisecond there is something broken in his expression, a flicker of helplessness in his gaze. But then his face hardens._ _

__“Oh, Dean,” the angel speaks quietly, moving as if to go to his friend and put a hand on his shoulder, but the Winchester backs away, holding up a finger in warning once more._ _

__“Don’t. Just get outta here, Cas. There’s nothin’ you can do.”_ _

__“Dean, I can help. I—I will continue to watch over you.”_ _

__The demon that is Dean Winchester wrinkles his brow and his upper lip trembles with what may be sorrow or disgust before he spits, “No, you won’t. You can’t, not anymore.” He looks away from the other and then down at the floor._ _

When there is no verbal response from the angel, Dean raises his eyes to spot that the room is now empty and nods bitterly. Of course, that’s just fuckin’ perfect. Master of leaving awkward silences behind, that guy. “Dammit, Cas!” he mutters, eyes closing in defeat. He knows that the angel isn’t going to give up on helping him, on either of them, and the look of shocked sorrowful compassion in Cas’s face when Dean showed his demon eyes…the pain when he said Cas could no longer watch over him.... Dean slams an open hand against the nearest wall. He can now legitimately relate to Ruby saying she wished she didn’t remember being human. If he didn’t remember, he would not feel –or care– that he was letting Cas down now.

“Hey,” Sam’s voice emanates from over Dean’s shoulder, startling him. He has no idea how much time has passed since Cas left, if any. “Got what we needed. You ready to go?” Sam waves Ruby’s now-bloody knife in the air, punctuating his words with emphasis. “I know where we need to head next.” He takes a closer look at his older brother and grows concerned, brows drawing together and eyes widening a little. “You okay, Dean?”

Dean blinks and clears his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, Sam. Let’s go.” He grabs the duffle from where he’d stashed it beside the double doors and pushes through them to get to the torture-instrument table. Gathering up the implements Sam apparently hadn’t needed, Dean stops. Frozen, not looking directly at his brother, who’d followed him back into the larger area, he nonchalantly asks, “What about the girl?” The follow-up question _What did you do to her? _hangs unspoken in the air between them.__

__Just as nonchalantly, Sam responds “I took care of it. Don’t worry.”_ _

_Don’t worry. _Yeah, sure. “Not that easy, Sammy.” When his little brother tilts his head slightly in that concerned way he has, flashing the puppy-dog eyes, Dean waves him impatiently away and violently stuffs everything into the duffle bag. “Just come on, Godzilla. We’ve got some cities to crush.”__

Sam rolls his eyes at his brother’s dumb attempt at humor and follows Dean out of the warehouse to the car. As Dean unlocks Baby and puts the guns, knives, and other paraphernalia into her trunk, Sam takes out an oil rag from the ever-present toolkit and wipes down Ruby’s knife. A bit of blood smears across his fingers and he licks them clean. In the back of his mind he shudders at the action, but shakes it off. He has to keep going, keep up appearances, and play the part. He cleans and sheathes the knife and tosses the rag back into the trunk. 

“Let’s roll,” Dean snaps the trunk shut and unlocks the driver’s door, ducking into his seat in a hurry to be elsewhere. Sam hauls his long body into the passenger side, closing the door after Dean has already started pealing out of the place where they’d been double-parked, Blue Oyster Cult blaring on the radio.


	2. Chapter Two.

**On the road. Cross-country. ******

“So, where she have us goin’, Sammy?” Dean asks nine songs later. 

Sam clears his throat and looks sideways at his brother. “Dude, what the hell happened to you in that warehouse?” 

“What?” Dean blinks, eyes crinkling at the edges in irritation as he looks out the windshield. “Nothin’. What’s that got to do with anything?” 

Sam lets out an incredulous exasperated laugh. “Dean, I’ve been giving you directions for the past ten minutes.” 

Dean blinks and checks the rearview mirror and then the speedometer. Shit. “Really?” 

His brother’s eyes flick away, glancing out the passenger window and then back at Dean. “Yeah, really. What’s goin’ on with you? You’re totally spaced out.” 

“I’m not ‘spaced out’, Sam,” the elder snaps. “This isn’t a sixties movie.” When Sam only presses his lips together and raises his eyebrows a little, Dean sighs and smacks the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “I just…Cas showed up at the warehouse, okay? He—he talked to me.” 

“What, seriously? When?” 

“When you were usin’ your mojo on Miss Scooby Snack in the other room.” Sam glares at him. “Uh, was that too much too soon? Sorry.” He coughs. “Anyway, he showed up worried. Said he’d been all over the U.S. lookin’ for us.” 

“What’d you say?” Sam asks quietly, hands stilling as they had been fluttering over his phone until that point, checking directions. 

Dean snorts. “What d’ya _think _I said? ‘Oh, please help us, Cas, we’re demons and I don’t know what to do!’ Come on.”__

____

Sam is silent for a moment. “You could’ve told him that. We _don’t _know what to do, Dean. Not long-term. I mean—” he lets out a breathy half-laugh. “I’m flying by the seat of my pants here. Lucifer – he still wants me to say yes. I know he does.” Dean flinches. “I’m fighting him off with the blood and the power, man, but that’s only gonna work for so long.”__

____

“Not if we gank every upper-level angel and demon we find. We keep sayin’ ‘no’, we ventilate their vessels; it’s simple, Sam.”

“We can’t keep running from this forever, Dean. I mean, who’s to say any of this is even gonna work? You’re a demon, I’m amped up on jamba juice, and we’re on our own. There’s nowhere else to go from here. Maybe—” he stops but then forges ahead. “Maybe you SHOULD’VE asked Cas for help.” 

“Please,” Dean scoffs. “He Fell for us already, the guy’s got enough on his plate. And did you seriously just un-ironically reference Jamba Juice?” Sam clears his throat and doesn’t meet Dean’s eyes. The driver sighs exasperatedly. “I hate you so much right now,” he mutters. 

“The feeling’s mutual,” Sam responds. 

“…He didn’t want to believe it,” Dean continues after a stretch of silence, almost to himself as an afterthought. “Didn’t want to believe I was a demon.” 

“Who didn’t? Cas?” 

“No, the friggin' Easter Bunny. YES, Cas! Who the hell _else _were we talking about? And then when he found out it was true, he still offered to watch over me. To help. How fucked up is that?”__

____

____

“That he cares about you, Dean? Uh, it’s not – at all. He’s your _friend _, man, come on.”__

____

____

Dean shakes his head stubbornly and waves his fingers above the wheel, dismissing Sam’s remark. “Whatever. I got him to leave, but he’s not gonna give up. I know that.” 

Sam looks down at his lap and nods, rolling his lips inward. He might have responded with a quiet “Good,” but if so, Dean ignores it. He can’t deal with that shit. This is his existence now, his life with Sam – if one can call it life; staying a step ahead of the angels and the Devil and leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. 

“Ah, screw it.” Dean turns up the music and Talking Heads blasts from the speakers as they drive on:

_Aahhh—watch out!_  
_You might get what you’re after; ___  
_Cool babies, strange but not a stranger ___  
_I’m an or-di-nar-y guy ___  
_Burning down the house! ___

***  
**Sioux Falls, South Dakota. ******

After exiting the warehouse upon Dean’s refusal of his help, the angel Castiel has nowhere else to go; no one he can think to turn to for assistance—other than Robert Steven Singer. So he transports himself to the cabin in the center of the old salvage yard in Sioux Falls just as the sun is coming up.

Bobby Singer is not in the mood. After having to shoot and kill his beloved wife again, and hearing of the deaths of Ellen and Jo, something had broken inside the middle-aged hunter; far more extensively even than his paraplegia extended. He is up at the crack of dawn for that exact reason, already pouring himself a glass of whiskey. He sighs heavily the second Castiel appears at the entrance to his study from the kitchen. “Dammit, boy, I have a doorbell for a _reason _.”__

The angel cocks his head, squinting. “Dean told me that whenever someone uses your doorbell, you shoot them.” 

The grizzled man swigs the majority of his whiskey and wipes his hand across his beard to blot away excess moisture. “You’re damn right.”

“…Oh.” Castiel takes the strong hint that he is not welcome and shuffles his feet awkwardly, but does not depart. This is too important. He must say what he has come to say. “Bobby, there is something that I must tell you.” 

“Save it, sunshine,” Bobby grumbles. “If you came here ‘cause Dean sentcha, tell him I said to hell with it. I’m done with this damned Apocalypse; I can’t stop those boys—” 

Cas strides into the study purposefully and slams his hands onto the table before Bobby, leaning toward the man in the wheelchair. “You’re right, this is not about stopping them now, but saving them.”

“Ah hell, angel, don’tcha think I’ve tried???” The older man’s voice is weary and his hand shakes slightly now as he gestures in the air toward his overflowing bookshelf. “I’ve gone through all the lore on circumventin’ deals with the Devil—” 

“That is not an issue now.” Cas straightens up again to deliver his news. “I'm afraid that Sam has…taken up his destiny. As the Boy King. I felt his power, and” _it was like nothing I have ever felt or seen, besides the moment when he took the demonic essence out of Alastair with nothing more than a clenching of his fist. _Castiel cannot forget that sight and the horror of it, but now things are infinitely worse. “…and Dean—” the angel swallows; this is hard for him to tell. “Dean has followed him and become a demon. He tells me they are ‘strapped in’. That I cannot help; there is nothing else to do.” The angel’s bright blue eyes stare downward as he adds “I am sorry to bear this news, Bobby, but…”__

“OUT,” Bobby Singer snaps, his eyes blazing with fury. “Get outta my house with your angel lies! I don’t know what kinda game Heaven thinks it’s playin’—” He moves his chair forward violently, nearly clipping Castiel’s knees as the angel stumbles backwards. “But you ain’t getting to them by lying to me, dammit!” 

“I am not lying. I _saw _Dean. I did not want to believe it either, but…” Cas chokes on his words, staring pleadingly at Bobby with sincerity and some surprise. The response is not what he would have expected from this typically level-headed human.__

Bobby shouts inarticulately and flings his now-empty glass across the room, shards spraying everywhere as it shatters. Castiel ducks a piece as it ricochets off the heavy wooden bookshelf and nearly cuts his face. Jimmy’s consciousness exhorts the angel to do something that will calm Bobby down, but Cas does not know what that something would be. “I came to tell you so that we might discover some way to help them both.” He smooths his trench coat, rubbing at the scorched edges ruefully and his lips flatten out as he adds “Please. I—I need your advice.”

Bobby throws his head back with a mirthless bark of laughter. “Kid, you ain’t gettin’ it.” He hauls himself backwards with a ferocious pull on his wheels, deliberately accentuating the chair in which he sits. “I’m fuckin’ useless, dead weight. The boys can’t use anything I’ve got, ‘cause hell, I’ve got nothin’.” His very form appears to diminish as he spins himself to face the wall away from the angel.

“…I understand.” Castiel carefully steps around pieces of glass and puts a gentle hand on the other’s shoulder, squeezing ever-so-slightly. A nonverbal ‘I’m sorry.’ He speaks once again as he lets go: “I will not bother you again. Goodbye, Bobby.” 

And then the angel is gone, leaving Robert Singer with his heart feeling as empty as his whiskey bottle.


	3. Chapter Three.

**A busy street in Louisville, Kentucky. ******

********

********

"You sure this is the right spot, Sammy?"

"YES, Dean, as sure as I've been the last six times you asked."

"Jeez, excuse me for wantin' to be positive we've got the right place. Wouldn't look good to go guns blazin' on a buncha civilians." He cuts his eyes across to the Hurrahs arcade and casino across the road in front of them. Figures the douchebag would end up in a place like this, Dean thinks. He can't resist adding, "And she was certain he'd be here?" 

Rather than answering, Sam hauls himself out of the passenger side, Ruby's knife once more in his pocket, and his phone in his hand. Dean grunts and swings his legs out as well, re-situating the gun in his waistband after checking to make sure it is fully loaded. Then he gets in the trunk for his machete. "Dude," Sam admonishes him. "Maybe try to be a LITTLE subtle, at least?" 

"What?" Dean asks innocently. "Oh, this?" he looks down at the long curved blade and feigns surprise. "How did I get a hold of this one? My mistake." His eyes widen comically. "That could really _hurt _somebody!" He grins wickedly and upon receiving a bitch-face as his only response, sighs. "C'mon, little brother, I gotta get at least a little fun out of this crap." He puts the machete back alongside a rifle and picks up a sawed-off shotgun and a smaller knife that he can conceal. "These better?" Sam nods and Dean rolls his eyes as he withdraws his arm and shuts the trunk after grabbing their smallest duffel to stuff his weapons in and sling over one shoulder. "Still a control freak."__

Ignoring his brother, Sam pans his eyes over the façade of the casino and the sidewalk before it several times, looking for demons. It is on the fourth pass that he points out with an infinitesimal head-jerk to Dean, a young man with a smug swagger wearing a red turtleneck under a faun-colored jacket.

“Art of subtlety,” Dean says sarcastically, and Sam bites his tongue to stop a comment like _that’s rich, coming from you, _from leaving his mouth, but his brother has already started moving and Sam does the same. In sync and in step, they look both ways before crossing the street to mingle in the crowd. Dean elbows his way past clumps of slow movers from the left while Sam unobtrusively slips past people on the right.__

The younger Winchester reaches the jacketed man first and comments “It’s a nice night for a walk, huh?” The demon makes a sharp aborted movement before feeling the sharp tip of something metallic against his lower back. 

“‘Specially if you can get out of guard duty to do it. Don’t even think about movin’, or I’ll shove this knife up your ass right here and now. Won’t lose any sleep over it either.” A deeper voice growls. Jerking his head back, the demon meets a pair of cold green eyes with his darker ones. “Ah ah ah,” Dean says, pushing the knife in a little more. It slices through layers of cloth and nicks the tender skin just above the demon's waistline. 

He grits his teeth with a tiny hiss of pain and spits out, "What do you want?"

“You know who we are,” Sam challenged, eyes lighting up with power to force the demon’s head to turn towards him. “And you know what I can do to you if you don’t cooperate.” He clamps a hand on the demon’s shoulder, and the other involuntarily winces as Sam shoots a jolt of power through his insides and nods his head at the casino beyond them. “Is he in there?”

“Eat me,” the demon spits out and then yelps immediately after as Sam’s fingers twitch and his power surges.

“I doubt you want that,” the Winchester responds conversationally, “Because I actually can, you know.” The demon’s pupils dilate in fear as the Boy King leans down and brings his powers to bear, other hand rising and closing in a loose fist. For now. “Is. he. In. there.”

“Yes!” the demon snarls.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Dean asks, pressing his knife harder against the other’s spinal column. “You’re taking us in. Get movin’, hotshot—and don’t even think of smoking out. That’ll just make things extra messy, and your boss doesn’t like mess, does he?”

The demon closes his eyes in furious defeat. “…No he does not.” 

Dean waggles his eyebrows at his brother triumphantly over the demon’s head. “Fan-fuckin-tastic. Lead the way.”

The three move in-step together to the side door and are waved inside after the demon flashes an ID.

***

The interior of the place is low-litten apart from neon flashes from electronic slot machines and bulbs dangling low over poker, blackjack, and crap-shooting tables for ambiance. A haze of cigar smoke tints the air blue-grey and taints it with a foggy heaviness that smells sharp and makes one automatically want to cough. Music blasts from multiple directions and out of multiple speakers, lending a cacophony of noise to the sounds of chaotic gameplay and shouts of mirth and fury that accompany gambling. 

Flowing through this confusion is a strange sort of order as denizens of the casino carry drink trays amongst the crowds clustered around the slot machines. Eyes of dealers at the poker and craps tables shine with satisfaction at the bedlam around them.

The two brothers glance at one another as their escort makes his sibilant way into the crowd and out its other side to reach the velvet-and-onyx tables where only the highest rollers play—fifty bucks into the pot. Per hand. Dean rolls his eyes at the pretentious douchebaggery oozing even from the casino workers. “Only demons in here,” Sam mutters, and indicates a broad-shouldered man in a dark suit playing against himself and the dealer at the farthest table from them. One Winchester moves to either side of the man, flanking him.

Without even bothering to turn his head, a smarmy British-accented voice says “Hello, boys. Join me?” The gambler flicks his fingers at two more chairs beside his place and sips from a mixed drink with a pink frilly umbrella. “Half-price cocktails tonight,” he adds persuasively. “I know how much you adore your alcohol.”

“Skip the girly-drink guzzlin’ bullshit, Crowley,” Dean snaps, slamming a palm onto the table as he leans in threateningly. “We got an axe to grind with your lyin’ ass.”

The demon Crowley sighs and wearily raises his eyes from his cards. “Give us the room,” he says to everyone else, shooting an extra-long look at the demon who had been brought in at knife point by Sam and Dean. “We will be having quite a chat later,” he purrs, eyes glittering ominously.

“For now get your skinny ass outta here,” Dean slaps at the demon’s behind with the flat of his knife and grins at the demon’s flinch. “Hey,” the Winchester adds sardonically, leaning backwards a little to watch the demon leave. “Good luck, buddy.” The demon yanks his jacket straight and glares from Dean to Sam before bobbing a miniature bow to Crowley as he leaves. “Heh heh heh heh,” Dean chuckles. “Nice bunch’a mooks you got here, Crowley. Didja cut ‘em out of a magazine, or were they free with douchebag rights to this hole?”

The wannabe King of Hell huffs in disapproval and cuts his eyes over to Sam. “If this sort of conversation is what you are subjected to on a daily basis, you have my sympathies, Moose.”

“Great.” Sam sniffs. “Do I, uh, have your ‘sympathy’ for that lie you told us about the Colt working on Lucifer??” His voice rises and his eyes blaze with barely-contained fury.

Crowley’s eyes have widened. “Such anger is really unbecoming from you, Samuel. You ought to work on that.” He drinks and taps the side of his head with two fingers. “Keeps the devils away," Crowley adds significantly. "And as for the Colt-on-Lucifer debacle,” the demon swings himself around so as to see both brothers. “It’s truly regrettable.”

“ _Regrettable _?!” Dean lunges at Crowley now, grabbing his tie and shirt collar and twisting them up in his fist, eyes blazing. “We lost good people on that goddamn suicide mission, you son of a bitch!” He remembers Ellen’s exhausted, pain-filled eyes and Jo’s pale, pale sweaty face and wants to stab this bastard through the neck, but contents himself with squeezing until Crowley’s eyes bug out a bit before letting go. Take it slow. With Sam’s amped-up power, they can do a whole lot of torture. Don't hafta jump right to the kill.__

The demon leans back to resituate his collar, and Sam breathes out furiously as Dean gives him a tiny nod. With an upward jerk of his chin and hand, the younger Winchester flings the broad demon into the side of the table, compelling him to slide across the top of it and slam full-force against the wall. Last demon in the area, the dealer at Crowley’s table, makes a move as if to aid his erstwhile player, but “Ah ah, hold it right there. I’m gonna need a whiskey from ya, Lloyd.” Dean is proud of himself for the reference, especially as this demon is wearing a maroon smoking jacket and has a long sallow face. He looks Dean up and down with one lip curled in disgust, and Dean’s knife comes up to tuck under his chin, the Winchester moving to kneel on top of the table faster than the eye can see. “The demon’s burden, Lloyd; the demon’s burden.” He indicates his knife with a wicked grin. “Now why don’t you be a good bartender and get me that drink?”

Teeth clenched, the last demon in the room looks toward his boss for orders and Crowley, rather wisely in Sam’s view, grunts “Stand…down.” Shuddering as Sam holds him pinned to the wall, the demon king does his best to make eye contact with his captor. “So, you’ve been…drinking the mickey, eh?” The Brit’s rough voice grows rougher as he spits blood, having bitten his tongue as he was flung backwards. Crowley does his best to remain nonchalant, even concerned for the well-being of this Boy King. Emphasis on _boy _. “Ah, Samantha. I do hope you’re aware of what that’s doing to your insides…”__

____

____

“Shut up, Crowley,” Sam says.

The other’s eyebrows rise. “So rude. And here I was treating the two of you as guests.” He shrugs and winces. “Ah—seems we can’t have nice things. Shame, really, not to continue to avert the Apocalypse together. And my mistake for ever helping you.”

“Oh, save it,” Dean barks. “We know you’re sayin’ all this just to cover your pansy ass, because once the Devil gets a’holda you,” a spark of fear catches in the pinned demon’s eyes now. “Yeah, that’s right—Hell will be like a picnic compared to what you’ll go through, buddy. Ol’ Scratch is gonna have tons of fun tormenting you. In fact,” Dean spins his knife in one hand, preparing to throw it. “…we could even gift ya to him ourselves.” He grins at his younger brother. “Wouldn’t that be something, Sammy?”

Sam, whose nostrils are flaring and upper lip is pulling back from his teeth as he continues to hold Crowley against the wall, smiles, but his eyes are expressionless. “Sure would, Dean.”

The new Hell-king wets his lips and smacks them nervously. “Look, boys, I think it would be…beneficial for us…to retain our alliance at present.”

“What the hell for?” Dean inquires coldly. “Because _I _think it’d be a lot easier to just kill you. Or keep you here for Lucifer to find. Be one less jackass in our way.” Crowley’s skin has gone ash-pale as he sees the Winchesters look at each other. He knows that look, and it does not bode well.__

__

__It is now that he recalls the dealer/bartender, who has just returned with a glass of whiskey for Dean. Flicking his eyes over, Crowley croaks out “Hel—” The demon raises his head and Dean grabs Ruby’s knife out of Sam’s pocket. In one smooth movement, he wings it through the demon’s neck. Red-yellow light, a fiery essence, lights up the demon’s sallow features and then he falls. Dean reaches out and catches the glass as it drops. Leisurely takes a drink, strolls over, and jerks the serrated blade out of the dead man’s windpipe. A gurgling whistle escapes the open neck, blood pulsing out of the slashed skin and pooling inside the split esophagus._ _

__

__“Sorry, Lloyd,” the elder Winchester shrugs, sipping his drink and smacking his lips as he wipes an arm across them. “You shouldn’t’ve gotten involved.”_ _

__

__“He WASN’T involved!!!” Crowley’s voice is shrill now. “He had only just lifted his—”_ _

__

__“You know,” Dean sucks in a slow breath and taps the tip of Ruby’s knife against his temple. “You’re reeeeallllly starting to piss me off here, Crowley. Mind if I finish this, Sammy?”_ _

__

__“Sure, Dean. I’ll put him on the table for you.” With trembling lips and clenched teeth, Sam rips Crowley off the wall and slams him flat onto the felt of the gambling table._ _

“Moose, you don’t want to kill me, really,” whines Crowley.

Sam contemplates these words as he idly stretches the demon’s limbs until Crowley lies spread-eagled on the surface of the table. “No, I don’t.” The demon is about to let out a sigh of relief, but

“But _I’m _totally fine with torturing you,” Dean cuts in, dipping the blade of Ruby’s knife into the drink still on the edge of the table. “Will you do the honors, little brother?” He holds out the dripping knife carefully and Sam takes a canister of salt out of his coat pocket, dousing the blade in it until the metal appears white as the tiny crystals stick. With a savage grin on his face and his own hand carefully out of salt spraying range, Dean stabs the knife through Crowley’s right hand and into the cloth and wood beneath it.__

The king's shriek of agony reverberates around the otherwise-empty and now silent room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alas, I have never been to a casino in Louisville, Kentucky. I have, however, been to one in Cherokee, NC so that is what I'm basing the first part of the boys' experience off of. Minus the demons, of course. The Hurrahs name is based around a chain of casinos named Harrahs.
> 
> Dean's (oblique) reference with his use of the name Lloyd is from Stanley Kubrick's version of _The Shining _by Stephen King, starring the inimitable Jack Nicholson.__
> 
> "Ol' Scratch" is another name for the Devil that comes from Middle English (and possibly Norse). It means demon or goblin. I thought it would be monotonous to call him Lucifer all the time, and "Mr. Scratch" is too formal for Dean.


	4. Chapter Four.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit hits the fan for Crowley. There is torture mentioned in this chapter, as well as some graphic descriptions of demon death and disintegration. If you can stomach such things, keep on reading.

**Inside the Hurrahs casino. Seconds later. ******

“Oink oink, little piggy,” Dean croons and unsheathes his other knives. Crowley does his best to scramble away—uselessly, as Sam has lifted his power just enough so the man can lever himself upward and force the knife farther into his hand to make a larger wound—it extends down toward the wrist and is smoking and corroding from the salt’s residue. With a loud THUMP! Dean grabs Crowley’s thrashing left leg and drives his long blade into the other’s knee. Sam smiles and wipes away blood from the welling wound in Crowley’s palm. The demon flinches away and Sam holds up his fingers now coated in crimson. He sucks the blood from each of them and then waggles the digits, causing the ex-crossroad demon’s eyes to show red as they roll upwards in pain.

“Augh! Boys… _why?!? _”__

“Simple.” Dean grabs the writhing demon by the jaw, forces his mouth open, and careful not to touch the salt himself, he pours the rest of the canister down Crowley’s throat. The Brit coughs blood and wheezes loudly as the hissing salt descends to eat away at the organs of his vessel, starting with his windpipe. “We’re gonna serve you up on a silver platter so Lucifer gets off our ass.”

Crowley tries his best to sneer as his chest shudders with wracking coughs and he thinks about what the Devil will do as the salt spreads into his lungs. “Oh—really? And what’s going to make him—show himself—here? How will he find me?”

“Let’s just say there’s gonna be a coup.”

Sam flips Ruby’s knife in his hand as his brother passes it to him and hits Crowley with another burst of power. “And it’s gonna be bloody,” he speaks softly.

As Crowley looks on in speechless horror, Dean opens the duffel bag he brought in and Sam opens the door.

His subjects begin to pour in through the opening as Dean shouts “Come and get us, you bastards!!!” Over the loudspeakers, a new song is blaring:

_It’s criminal_  
_There ought to be a law ___  
_Criminal ___  
_There oughta be a whole lot more ___  
_You get nothin’ for nothin’ ___  
_Tell me, who can you trust? ___  
_We got what you want ___  
_And you got the lust! ___  


_If you want blood, you got it ___  
_If you want blood, you got it ___

***

Dean had grabbed the table next to Crowley's and dropped it on its side the second Sam flung the door wide. He already filled his shotgun with salt shells, and Sam's got the power and the knife. The formal guard was the first group inside, having heard Crowley's aborted shout for help as well as his pained screams. They pile in past Dean's table and he rises and shoots the first at point-blank range.

The demon's skull explodes like a rotten pumpkin, blood and hair and grey-matter flying. The two who'd been behind him freeze and Sam clenches both fists, sending their smoky essences straight back to Hell. Dean shoots over their vessels' shoulders, taking a knee as another group comes. _How effing stupid can they be? _He asks himself as his work and his brother's create a bottleneck at the door where the demons are entering. And still they come. Finally a couple get smart and run in from the side door behind the bar, but Dean simply pivots around and shoots them like a carnival game, BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM, shots stuttering like those from a Tommy gun. Sam shoves his power outward and the now-headless bodies explode, sending a shower of blood cascading over the bar.__

Dean whistles at the sight and his brother whips around and shoves three more demons back as they dive over the closest table. Sam’s power hits them so hard that their bodies become a mist of blood spattering the walls and soaking into the cloth on the card table, turning it into a muddy soupy swamp around Crowley. Dean squeezes off a shot and then chucks a knife that sinks into the center of a demon’s forehead.

_Blood on the streets—!_  
_Blood on the rocks—! ___  
_Blood in the gutter, ___  
_Every last drop! ___  
_You want blood, you got it ___  
_Yes you have!! ___  


It goes on.

And on.

And on.

And then everything is quiet, save for the drip-drops of blood and the last sickening schlock! of a pound of flesh coming unstuck and falling off the place where it had been stuck to the wall. Dean swipes a bloody arm across his forehead to dab off the sweat, giving his features a patina not unlike camouflage or war paint. His eyes pan across the room to see countless bodies piled and crumpled motionless. For every one he shot or Sam disintegrated, two or three still remained. Good. They can make the struggle look realistic. With a grunt, Dean stretches his shoulders and arms, hauling himself upright. While releasing his kinks he looks over at Sammy, who is swallowing hard, Adam’s apple bobbing frenetically up and down.

The whites of his younger brother’s eyes are blinding in his carmine-colored face. Every inch of Sam’s skin from forehead to collarbone is soaked with blood. His hair too is caked with it, and twines in stiff spikes and twists in ringlets like the bodies of snakes. “Someone needs a shower,” Dean quips. Sam blinks and looks at him. “None’a that’s yours, right?” the older Winchester asks. Sam just stares, apparently in a daze. "Hey," Dean snaps his fingers in front of the other's face. "Hello in there! Earth to Sammy!" He waves his hands one by one at his brother, and then claps loudly.

Sam shudders violently and staggers backwards, breathing hard. "Wh-what the _hell _, Dean? Why'd you do that?"__

__

__Raising his palms peacefully, Dean says "Relax. I was just checking to see if you were alive. Ya seriously zoned out there, dude."_ _

__

__"Did I?" Sam looks down, running a hand through his hair absent-mindedly. When he brings his palm down wet with blood, he wrinkles his nose. "Ugh. That's gross. How can there be this much blood?"_ _

__

__Dean chuckles softly. "Ventilating sixty-plus demons and their meatsuits has the tendency to be pretty bloody, Sam."_ _

__

__" _Sixty? _" Sam looks around wide-eyed. "Seriously? I just thought we whaled a bit more on Crowley!"___ _

___ _

___Dean is now leaning forward, a crease between his eyebrows. Voice slow and concerned, he says "...No, Sam, I stabbed Crowley twice. Then you used your powers to freeze him on the table. He's still there." The elder nods over at the only table not upturned. Crowley lies, a motionless lardlike lump, curled in the center of the viscera-soaked table. Sam's eyes rest on the sight and then return to look at Dean. "But don't you see—don't you remember opening up the door? I yelled 'come and get us, ya bastards!!!' and you went...crazy." Dean stops and shakes his head wildly. "I've never seen you tear up that many demons before. Some of them literally _disappeared _into showers of blood." Dean wets his lips and watches Sam's eyes as his brother continues to listen. No way. "You really don't remember doing that? Any of it?"___ _ _

___ _

___Sam's eyes are large and truthful and now grow slightly scared. "No, I don't. How long did it last, Dean? How long were we in this...this fight?" He looks around, taking in the blood and bodies and lumps of flesh and brain, shards of bone, and hunks of hair.___

___ _

___The elder brother rolls his eyes. "Well I didn't exactly check the _time _, Sam." His brother just looks at him, eyes pleading, pupils shrinking. During the battle, Sam's eyes had practically been -and stayed- full black. His mojo was really working. If he really couldn't remember... "But I'd say it was almost an hour, at least."___ _ _

___ _

___The shock in Sam's eyes is turning into horror, and Dean knows that if his brother starts talking, they'll end up having a psycho-babble session on whether this is really such a good idea, what they're doing and going to do, yada yada. So he reaches down and grabs the body of the nearest demon who still has arms. "Here," he shoves her at Sam. "Help me position 'em."_ _ _

___ _

___"Position?" Sam stands dumbly, holding the dead demon under the arms._ _ _

___ _

___Dean sighs. "Yes. Crowley was the victim of a bloody coup, remember? His demons rose up in factions and turned against him. Not before they tortured him for being a shitty King of Hell." Dean jerks his head with a small smile. He's proud of that little detail. "But most of 'em are currently facing the wrong way." He takes a demon's head and turns it to face the table where Crowley remains. "C'mon, Sammy, we gotta make it look good to the Devil. Make him focus on taking back his Hell throne rather than comin' up here." He grins widely at his younger brother to lighten the mood. "You were a theatre nerd, remember? Help me make this the best version of...uh... _Julius Caesar _anyone's ever seen!"___ _ _

___"Titus Andronicus," Sam says quietly after a silence.___

___ _

___Dean scrunches up his nose. "What?"_ _ _

___ _

___" _Titus Andronicus _would make more sense for this. Not Caesar. Titus had the most people dead onstage at a time. Fourteen deaths in the whole play. _Julius Caesar _only had five deaths onstage." Rolling his eyes to the ceiling, Dean Winchester groans. He should be given a friggin' medal for this. He'd pulled that Shakespeare reference out of his ass. Hadn't even read the play, and of COURSE Sammy is going to school him in this shit. At least it's getting his brother out of his own head to help. Better to build this up as a crazy bloody coup and try to throw Lucifer off their scent than to do nothing. Keep running and don't look back. Dean is tired of that. Hell, he wants to DO something. Hit back. Really fight against the shittiness that brought him and his brother here to this course of action, to this fight in this casino. Hell, there was a reason he and Sam were still together in all this. He thought they couldn't be. He had told Sam to go his own way...._____ _ _

Dean recalls the tiny room in that Kansas City hotel. Four in the morning on the phone, ducking into the refrigerator to grab some beer. _“Look, Sam, it doesn’t matter what we do. Turns out you and me are the fire and the oil of Armageddon. So on that basis alone we should pick a hemisphere. Stay away from each other. For good.” ___

____

____

_“It doesn’t have to be like this,” _his brother had protested on the other end, fierce. _“We can fight it—”___

____

____

And he had wanted to, dammit, but he'd said they should do it separately. _"We're not stronger when we're together, Sam. I think we're weaker. Because whatever we have between us—love, family, whatever it is—they are always gonna use it against us. You know that." _Well, damn, I had to eat my words today, Dean decides as he watches his brother haul a meatsuit over to Crowley's table, carefully positioning its limbs in a fighting stance. "Now if this goes right," he says quietly to Sam, "we can use what we've got between us...we can use it against THEM."__

Sam stares at Dean in wonder. Never before he had become a demon was his older brother so POSITIVE about everything. Or if not everything, about most things that before he was never positive about. Or had anything that he was positive about, really. But despite the fact that Sam can’t remember anything from that battle—after they’d tortured Crowley, his memory consists of nothing but a red haze—Dean seems okay with what is happening. He’s more relaxed than he’s been in a long time. Sam can tell his brother enjoyed the battle that Sam doesn’t remember. He watches as Dean now makes his way carefully among the bodies to stand close to the one table not overturned.

“Hang tight, Crowley,” Dean utters with a scathing wink as he surveys the bodies scattered about the room. The king’s groaning form barely stirs beside the two of them, save for the slow blinking of one baleful eye. “Oh don’t worry, I’m sure _somebody’s _gonna show up really soon.” He shrugs. “Devil or angel, who knows?”__

__

__“Yeah.” Sam lets out a dry chuckle. “But good luck with whoever shows.”_ _

***

An indeterminate amount of time later, the doors bang open on the other side of the casino and Crowley feels a surge of power enter the room along with someone. Oh, no. No no no. “Bollocks,” the demon mutters to himself. He tries to turn, to roll, to sit up; to do _some _thing…and hears an amused voice.__

____

____

“Well, SOMEBODY was having fun…Shame I wasn’t invited to the party.”

Dragging his fingers along the edges of overturned and obliterated tables, making clean tracks through the blood, and then rubbing his fingers together experimentally, a blond man with a blunt face, deep-set eyes, and a broad-tipped nose appears in the demon king’s view. “Hello there, Crowley. It’s been a while.” His eyes begin glowing slightly as he grins, baring his teeth at the demon trussed up like an infant in swaddling clothes. He crouches down to look into Crowley’s face, hand ruffling the demon’s hair almost playfully, but with a sort of detached interest as well. As if he is unsure whether the hair is real, or if this scene itself is part of reality or some strange hallucination. But no, he really IS up here; out of the Cage and prepared to take control of the Earth - this stunning thing…. Stretching his fingers, the divine being twists and flips his hand over, studying his skin critically before focusing back on Crowley. “I’m your old boss, remember? Heard you’ve been keeping my seat warm for me.” He cocks his head with a slow wink of amusement as Crowley gulps and gasps and cannot speak. Again. This is just bloody perfect.

The other's silence is just fine with Lucifer. He takes a turn about the room, peering closely at the carefully-staged coup. Oh, he knows that it's been staged, of course; knows it and loves it. “‘The Last Hurrah’. Whattaya say, Crowley? A fitting tribute to this debacle, don’t you think?” the Devil sweeps an arm around at the blood-soaked room grandly, and acts as though he is shaking out a newspaper to read the headline. “I mean, you got your ass handed to you! I miiiight be impressed that the Winchester boys did so well; but then, you never were a true contender. Not on my level.” Crouching down again, the first Fallen angel cups the scruffy bearded chin of the demoralized and defeated demon in one hand, raising his other palm upward and waggling his thin fingers. Crowley groans. “See, the difference between the two of us, Crowley,” Lucifer smacks his lips. “Well, it’s that you want power for power’s sake. Whereas it is, frankly, my _right _to rule Hell and dick around with my Father’s oh-so-important Plan.”__

__

__With a movement precise yet lazy, the ex-angel touches his fingers to Crowley’s forehead and transports the demon into a dank underground space with a cold stone floor. Wherever he is, it isn’t in Hell; of that much, at least, he is sure. The temperature is not nearly sweltering enough._ _


	5. Chapter Five.

**Undisclosed location. Same teleported to by Lucifer above. ******

****

Crowley cannot see the devil anywhere now, but hears a low chuckle reverberate around the interior of…wherever he has been taken to. Likely to be subjected to more torture. Shifting his weight with a grunt, the broad-shouldered demon narrows his eyes and mutters “All right then, kitty-cat. Come out to play.” It does not even matter to him that he just compared Lucifer to a harmless little fuzzy mammal. This has not been Crowley’s day, and he doubts that his situation is going to improve, so he might as well get in a couple of cracks.

With a hiss and saunter out of the shadows—neither of which disproves Crowley’s jab—Lucifer flicks a finger up to point at and poke Crowley emphatically, continuing his previous conversational point. “And n _o _one, least of all YOU, is going to stand in my way.”__

Strolling directly to the side of the comatose demon, the devil reaches down with his right hand and hauls Crowley’s head up by a fistful of hair. “You thought you could make a deal with those apes? To depose ME? Tut tut.” The erstwhile angel shakes his head as he crouches down to be at the other’s eye-level. “You should know better, Crowley. That Colt job really was sloppy.” He bops the demon’s nose with his left index finger. “I honestly expected...more.”

Crowley bares his teeth at the Devil, his arms held low and limp, dragging on the stone floor. But as Lucifer crouched, felt in his pocket brushing against the demon’s side was the archangel blade with which Gabriel had been stabbed. Swaying closer as if he has no balance left, the demon spits “That’s just it, _Satan _.” His fingers clench around the hilt of the angel blade and thrust it up into the soft underside of Lucifer’s chin, ripping through skin and muscle and sinew. The Devil’s eyes widen and glow as bright as the morning star for which he was named. He roars and chokes on blood as it spurts from his mouth, coating his teeth and pouring down his chin. His jaw tightens and he snuffs out Crowley’s essence with a clenching fist, extending his arm as he crumples to the cold stone floor.__

__

__As his vessel flickers and drains out its demonic power in a puff of dark red smoke, the King of Hell croaks “Even when I lose, I win. _...Bon voyage, boys." _____

_____ _

_____ _

***

Castiel is losing power. He can feel it seeping away, his Grace flickering out faster the farther he Falls away from Heaven's mandate. He wants to confide in someone—anyone—to tell the angels that he cannot come back to the fold. He cannot return because he is trying to help humanity.

But he doubts there is anyone left who will listen.

***

**A truck-stop diner on Route 66. ******

Dean Winchester slugs about half a beer as his brother focuses intently on the news playing on the small staticky TV in the corner. A waitress brings them both plates of eggs as well as a cup of coffee for Sam. “Cream and sugar?” she asks with a smile. And quite possibly with more on her mind than literal sugar. Dean raises his eyebrows and glances at his brother, but Sam says nothing in reply. Doesn't even act like he'd heard. He is staring so fiercely at that television it's a wonder the thing hasn't exploded yet. Clearing his throat, Dean nods at the waitress with his usual flirtatious smile. When she doesn't respond, his eyebrows come together and he sighs, smacking Sam lightly on the shoulder. " _Dude. _"__

__" _What _, Dean?! I'm sorry if I'm worried about people finding out—oh." He sees the waitress' now-uncertain smile and his older brother's smirk. Asshole. "Um, sorry. You were asking—uh, about the coffee?" He does his best to smile, awkwardly sweeping some hair behind his ears and carefully accepting the cup from her. "I'll just take it black. Thank you." She nods and smiles again, this time more brightly, before turning around and heading for the booth at the far end of the bar where several truckers sit. Sam presses his lips inward in an attempt to act nonchalant as he sips his coffee. His brother snorts with laughter behind a forkful of egg. "Not funny, Dean," Sam hisses irritably.___ _

__"Yeah, you're right. It's hilarious, heh. The look on your face! And your spastic awkward cover-up. Classic."_ _

Sam glares at him, lips pursed and eyebrows high. "Are you done?" Dean sighs and sips some more beer with an eye-roll that his brother chooses to ignore. "Good, 'cause we're gonna have to deal with blowback from that crap with Crowley. You know that." Dean makes a face, wrinkling his nose and waving Sam off. "I'm serious, Dean. We have to talk about this! You know what Lucifer's gonna do when he gets wind of it??" His voice is rising slightly and he feels himself beginning to tense. With a conscious effort, Sam breathes deeply and lets his muscles relax.

But Dean just bares his teeth in a grin of feral satisfaction. "Well, he can deal with it—the son of a bitch'll know not to mess with us." 

Sam stares. Is his brother actually serious? “Do you even _hear _yourself right now? After he finishes with Crowley, he’s gonna be even MORE gung-ho about getting to us! It’s the Devil, Dean! Come on!”__

He lowers his voice again after glancing around furtively. One of the truckers raises their eyebrows, and another cranes his neck around to check out the pair of crazies in the bar seats.

Dean raises his eyebrows and finishes off his beer. “Way to be a girl about this, Sam.” He smiles when his little brother continues to look solemn, those puppy-dog eyes full of pain. Damn. “C’mon, where’s your optimism, huh? We’ve stayed ahead of the devil so far.”

“MY optimism? Uh, I don’t know, maybe I lost it when I literally had to yank my brother’s soul out of him!! That does something to a guy.”

He can’t stop thinking…

"Ah, come on, Sammy—"

_No. I won't. Don't make me. ___

__

__

__

__"It's not a big deal."_ _

__It is. Oh, God, it is. It's the biggest deal.__

____

____

__…About what he had done—what he had done to Dean.__

[...]

_"What are you gonna do then, Sam? Say 'yes' to the freakin' Devil?!" ___

“No! I—” Sam had turned away from his brother, head bowed, shoulders slumping. In an almost inaudible voice, he added “Bobby was right.”

Dean’s eyes widened and then narrowed. He reached out and spun Sam to face him, snapping “What?”

“I said, Bobby was right,” Sam repeated louder. “He’ll—find everything. Everything he can use against me, and he’ll use it. Everything. And the worst—” He had choked on his words, raising terror-stricken eyes full of grief to look at his brother. “—the worst will be you, Dean. He’ll torture you, or kill you, or make you live – live a life…oh, God….” Sam could not make himself speak the very worst of his fears, but stopped instead. Stopped, and shuddered, and sobbed.

And Dean, the hero, the righteous man, the best big brother in the whole godforsaken world, stood there and softly said “Well, that’s it then. We’ll just have to make sure he can’t.” He moved to the center of the room, right up to his little brother, and put a warm, steady hand on his shoulder. “You’ll have to use your mojo on me.”

Sam whipped his head up, confused and horrified. “ _What? _”__

__

__Dean licked his lips and shifted his weight slightly. “Cool it, Sam. I…I’ve been thinkin’ about this, and...look, if you can exorcise demons—send their souls, their essences, whatever—back to Hell, stands to reason ya can take mine. I’m only human.” He’d spread his legs in a power pose and raised his arms. “Take my soul. Use your mojo on me, Sammy. Turn me into a demon,” he was sweating, blinking rapidly, but deadly serious. “…and get juiced. That’s how we’ll keep these sonsabitches off’a us.”_ _

“Dean. Are you telling me to go _Dark Side??? _To become a—a bloodsucking freak?”__

__

__Dean had winced at those words, and with a tremor in his voice growled, “N _o _, dammit, but I want you to be SAFE, and if the alternative’s bein’ Lucifer’s bitch, I say this is our best shot. Our only option.” He sighed. “Hell, I don’t like it any more than you do. Takin’ my soul….” Dean had shuddered then, with revulsion. Sam can still see it. But he can also recall his brother’s next words clear as day: “But if somebody has to do it, I want it to be you.”___ _

___ _

___“But that’s just it—I _don’t _have to!”__ _ _ _

___ _

___“Shut up, Sam. I’m done arguin’. I swore to myself that I’d be here for you, and this is how I can do that. I’m with ya all the way, little brother. Right here.” The older Winchester had smiled and then swallowed hard, jaw jumping. As he rolled his shoulders back, he added, “Now we gotta do this quick...before I change my mind.”_ _ _

___ _

___Sam remembers the sweat on his older brother's face, the fearful resolve in his eyes. He had tried once more: "Dean. Are you SURE?"_ _ _

___ _

___"Yes. Do it, Sammy. I trust you." _I trust you, just don't go too far, don't—____

____

____

___ _

____No, no, I can't do it, Dean—I can't—I'll KILL you— ____ _ _

___ _

___"Sam."_ _ _

Don't fight me on this, okay? I know where this road goes, and it's dark and bloody and there's no way out—

"Sam. Sammy, what's wrong with you? Hey," Sam opens his eyes with a shuddery gasp to see Dean staring into his face with concern, one hand gripping him by the shoulder. "I paid for our food, c'mon. Let's go."

They're in the diner. They're still in the diner at the truck stop, and Sam looks up with his eyes teary. "Dean—"

"Shh. Hey, hey. Let's get to the car, come on." The shorter Winchester hauls his larger brother up from the bar stool and slaps him on the back to get him moving. Sam realizes he is causing a scene, so he stumbles upright and waves awkwardly at the waitress and the other diners as they leave.

Once out the door of the diner and beside Baby, his brother rounds on him. "What the hell was all that in there? You're not freakin' out on me, are you? 'Cause we gotta be in this together, Sam."

The Boy King presses his lips together. "Yeah, Dean. I know. I'm not freaking out, I promise. I'm with you. It was just—" _All those demons we killed were wearing people, or had souls, once. And you don't care because I TOOK your soul. You made me take your soul. _"...You worry about me all the time, Dean, and I was just thinking—"__

__

__"I'm fine."_ _

"But you're _not _. I literally took away your SOUL," Sam tried. "Doesn't that—?"__

__

__"I'm FINE, Sammy. Seriously. Now can we go?" He stares at his brother, green eyes level and bright with impatience._ _

__

__Sam sighs heavily. He's not letting this go. "Dean..."_ _

__

__"All right, I hear you, Sam. Okay? It's tearin' you up that ya took my soul from me, but come ON, dude! You did it because I asked you to, remember?" He stares the other down, serious, before bending down and unlocking Baby. "Now, am I gonna have to make this socially awkward, or are you gonna get in the damn car?"__

___ _

___Sam gets in the car._ _ _

***

The angel is on his own. Really and truly, for the first time now that he has made the decision not to bother Bobby any longer. But he must search out the whereabouts of the Winchesters, even without the powers of Heaven at his disposal.

And so Castiel ponderously begins the process of locating a car and learning how to drive.

He keeps his eyes on the news through television and newspapers, searching for any sign of Sam and Dean or the renewal of the Apocalypse.

Some time after beginning to search, he comes across an article that catches his eye:

"Murder Spree at Casino in Kentucky" Louisville, KY— Police are baffled by the discovery of more than sixty bodies in Hurrahs Arcade and Casino yesterday morning. An anonymous tip from the scene led authorities to a bloodbath in the high-rolling room. Bets placed at those tables rise upwards of five thousand dollars a game. Did a fight break out over a high-stakes poker game? No one is sure; there are no eyewitnesses to confirm the cause. Officers found traces of table salt and sulphur at the scene, along with extensive amounts of blood, not all of it belonging to the victims. Some citizens are saying this was a sacrifice to the Devil that signals the onset of the Apocalypse, but this reporter could get no comment from the authorities in regards to such opinions. No suspects have been positively identified or retrieved, but according to the coroner's report seen by this reporter, at least one—and at most three—persons left the scene alive. One lost enough blood to die from their injuries without swift medical attention. The chief of police has put out a notice to all hospitals and urgent care facilities in the area. "If anyone has knowledge or suspicions about who, or what, precipitated this tragedy, we ask them to come forward," the police chief said. "Any piece of information, no matter how apparently insignificant, could be a big help." Citizens are requested to submit concerns and evidence to the downtown Louisville police station.

Castiel's eyes narrow as he notes the presence of salt AND sulphur at the scene. The latter, of course, meant demons. And the former had to be from a hunter. And what sort of hunters would be daring enough to enter a demonic den? Two brothers with nothing to lose and a host of powers of their own.

Not yet confident in his driving abilities, the angel takes a bus to Louisville. He has to be certain that his charges, his _friends _had done this. If so, perhaps he can follow their trail. Castiel refuses to give up on finding them again.__

**Metro Precinct police station, 4th Division. Downtown Louisville, Kentucky. ******

********

********

“The FBI gets news pretty fast.”

“Yes. That…is what the FBI does. We always hear news.” Castiel winced. He is still not comfortable perpetuating this ruse, lying to humans about who he is. But it is for his friends’ benefits, and he had kept the investigative badge Dean gave him on their search for Raphael.

So he flashed his badge—proper side up this time—and now follows the police detective to whom he showed it.

The detective does not appear suspicious of his credentials, simply frazzled and exhausted. “It’s a good thing they sent somebody down, because we’re all stumped.” Shooting an apologetic look over one shoulder at him. “I know, crack police work, right? But we’ve never seen anything like this. I’m not up on demon-worshiping serial killers or what kids get into these days when they’re drunk or…on drugs, or…” She blows air out of her cheeks and shakes her head in utter bafflement. The two have left the station itself and come to the back door of the casino only a few streets over. Yet another piece of the puzzle—how did whoever did this get away with it so close to the station? Pausing with one gloved hand on the door handle to unlock it and the other holding up the crime tape, the officer warns “You may want to prep yourself for what you’ll be seeing. Even by typical homicide standards, this isn’t pretty. Also—” she takes her hand off the tape and hands Castiel a new pair of gloves. “Keep the scene clean, okay?” The angel nods, and the cop turns the knob and pushes the door open.

The angel Castiel has seen a lot in all of his eons. Death, destruction, pain…but none of that hits so hard or so deep as this, the sixty-four demons brutally murdered by his two closest friends. They are still the Winchesters, yes, and hunting down monsters is what they do; but this… the demons were dragged and positioned in throes of death that appeared akin to an uprising centered on one particular blood-soaked table.

Maneuvering his shiny black shoes around the gouts of blood and guts and viscera, Castiel carefully steps over to the table and places his now-gloved hand flat upon the saturated and still slightly sticky surface. Residual power shoots through him and he sees -“Crowley,” the angel mutters aloud- he feels the demon’s pain as he is held down by Sam’s power and tortured by Dean; images flash of the demon king being stabbed, of being forced to swallow salt, all while held immobile and in agony. The last image of Dean leaning close, his green eyes bright and intent, and the words _get Lucifer off our ass _enter Castiel’s head. And then there is darkness before a final blossom of power—different from Sam’s, even darker—and the Devil himself appears. Castiel rips his hand away from the surface of the table, shuddering violently.__

__

__The Devil had been HERE—not only that, but the carnage had been meant to draw him in. The angel has never known Sam or Dean to be so coldly, cruelly calculating. He never thought that depth of darkness, of evil, was inside them. And therein lies his mistake, he thought. His failing was underestimating the brothers, not realizing that their devotion to each other could send them on the worst possible path. The road Sam and Dean are on is the road to nowhere, and he must turn them around._ _

He is staring fiercely at the surface of the bloody table with such concentration that he does not hear the officer ask “Agent…Agent Moscone? Uh, Eddie? Are you all right?” A gentle touch on his arm straightens Castiel’s spine and he stares at the cop for a long moment, a distant expression in his icy blue eyes.

“Yes, I am physically well,” he says.

The officer relaxes. “Oh, good. I know it can be a shock…to see something like this at first.”

“I have seen such things before,” the angel responds brusquely, his face grave.

The officer is taken aback, but jumps to the necessary next step. If what the agent has seen is connected... “Ok, should we be on the lookout for a serial killer, then?”

“Not as such, no.” The angel studies this policewoman closely. How does Dean decide to trust someone? Sam is more apt to give an explanation to people on a case, but Castiel knows that Dean grows impatient with his brother’s willingness to trust others. For Dean, one has to earn his respect. Or he lies. "When humans want something really bad, they lie," his friend had told him. But Castiel does not have time to find a situation where this woman can prove herself worthy of his trust. He just has to hope. _Have faith, Castiel, _Jimmy’s voice speaks in the back of his head.__

The angel squints and lets out a minuscule sigh. He never knows when his vessel will decide to add his voice to Castiel’s consciousness. Typically it is for situations such as this, when the angel is at a loss. But Jimmy speaks up so rarely that his suggestions always come as a shock. The officer is growing uncomfortable and concerned at his continued silence however, so Castiel makes a decision. He withdraws a creased photograph from the pocket of his trench coat. “Have you seen or come into contact with either of these two men before?”

The officer peers closely at the picture and then asks “May I?” Castiel hands the photo to her. It showed the Winchester brothers, standing in front of their classic car, both laughing about something.

[...]

Dean had thrown a sheaf of papers off the desk in Bobby’s study the day the picture was given to Castiel, furious about _Sam’s genius plan to jam the devil back in the box…hole…shit! _Whatever the word choice had been, Castiel appeared right after Dean’s blowup ended. He came into the shower of paper and saw Sam helping Bobby gather it up into messy piles as the front door slammed shut.__

__“Oh. Hey, Castiel,” Sam had said wearily, rubbing his forehead with thumb and forefinger. “Dean, uh, isn’t here. He just left, actually.”_ _

__“The princess is goin’ for a drive to simmer down,” snorted Bobby. “Good riddance for an hour, at least.”_ _

__Sam sighed and looked at the older man reproachfully. “Bobby—”_ _

__“ _What _, boy? Don’t you start with me! Dean needs to get his head on straight about all’a this. There’s a big possibility we ain’t all getting out alive.”_ _ __

__

__

__Sam pressed his lips together and nodded solemnly, sorry for his irritation. “Yeah, I know, Bobby.”_ _

The older man grunted. “I know YOU do, ya idjit—but someone’s gonna hafta send that memo to Dean.” Rolling himself into the back room, the grizzled hunter called back over his shoulder, “And get him to ACCEPT it!”

__Sam chuckled and shook his head fondly as Castiel stood by silent. The Winchester then turned to him and inquired, “Are you okay with the idea of not all of us making it, Cas?”_ _

__“Yes,” the angel said calmly. And then, as Sam’s eyes widened a little, he explained: “I have made my peace with the very real possibility that I will die in this fight. I am a soldier—for me, death in battle is inevitable.” His eyes lowered then and his lips trembled a little. “But I will miss…living, now.” He raised his eyes to look directly into Sam’s. “I will miss you and Dean,” he spoke earnestly._ _

__Taken a little aback by the intensity of the angel’s words, Sam smiled again, bigger and warmer this time. “I’ll miss you too, Cas. So will Dean, even if he doesn’t say it. Here—” Clearing his throat and bending down, the younger Winchester had sifted through the papers stacked haphazardly back on top of Bobby’s desk. He withdrew a small piece of paper, shiny and darker on one side. A photograph. It showed Dean and Sam facing to one side and laughing as they leaned against the outside of the Impala. “I want you to have this. So…uhm, when everything goes down, you can remember us.”_ _

__As he took the photo gently, the angel responded “I will most likely not outlive you, Sam.”_ _

__“Yeah, well.” Sam sniffed and nodded, doing his best to remain positive. “Just in case.” He had awkwardly reached out and patted Castiel on the back._ _

The angel thinks of this now and taps the surface of the photo with one finger. How to explain who these men are and what they mean to him, when he is forced to lie about his identity and occupation? He points to Dean. “This is my…partner in the FBI. The taller man next to him is our—” the angel tries to remember a word that Dean uses to describe Sam, one that would not arouse suspicion. Castiel wants to tell as much of the truth as he can. “—He is our researcher. They both have gone missing, and as a result of this horrific occurrence here, I-I am worried about them. We have been through much together, the three of us.”

“I getcha,” the officer replies, handing the picture back. “And I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen either one. They out on assignment?”

“An assignment of a sort, yes. But they went against our mandate.”

The officer’s dark eyebrows shoot up. “Went off the reservation then. Oh boy.”

“I don’t understand that reference,” Castiel responds. “But if it isn’t too much trouble, I will need…”

“You need to see anything that would indicate either of your buddies came through here.” The officer ponders. “Gimme a sec; we’ll have to go back to the precinct to use my computer. Hopefully I can find somethin’ for ya there—at the very least put out a BOLO.” She turns and heads back to the door, holding it open and looking back at him questioningly. “Are you all through here, Agent Eddie?”

Eddie. That is his name. He must not forget it. “I am, Officer. Detective. Thank you.” Castiel steps carefully around the corpses and looks back at the table once, praying that he can get to Sam and Dean; that he can save them before it is too late and more bodies are discovered.


	6. Chapter Six.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some torture and psychological abuse that goes down in this chapter, as well as gore described, so please be warned. Demons do some pretty screwed-up stuff, and when the demon in question is a Winchester...

THEN

Apocalypse Now.

"How are you gonna control the Devil when you can't control yourself?"

"I won't do it, Dean. I'm not gonna say yes."

"Use your mojo on me, Sammy. ... I'm with you all the way, little brother."

"Then the rumors are untrue. You are not a demon."  
"Oh, I am."

"...I have to save them."

NOW

**Windom, Minnesota. ******

The woman in scrubs exits her car and locks the door. Slinging a long-handled bag over her left shoulder, she sighs and pulls her coat closer around her as she walks up the driveway. Unlocking the front door, she is surprised not to find any lights on, but figures that she will find her son sitting in the dark listening to music. Again. He does that a lot when home on breaks. “Pre-med’s killing me, Mom,” he said on multiple occasions, and she patted his cheek with a chuckle. 

“Try nursing, honey.” 

Going into the kitchen and flicking the overhead light switch, she finds it unresponsive. A vague clicking noise is all she hears in response to the position of the switch. “Wonderful,” she sighs. “Have to check the fuses. Adam!” she calls out to her son before noticing the note laying on the counter.

Hey Mom,  
Woke up and went to get groceries. Be back soon.  
Love, Adam

Smiling, the mother puts her purse down on the counter and rubs her hands together, warming them in readiness for checking the circuit breakers. “Wish you were here for this, John,” she murmurs. Adam’s father was a mechanic. This kind of problem would probably be a piece of cake for him. She, on the other hand…let's just say she considers it a blessing and a miracle that her son is so self-sufficient. She pulls a flashlight from the recesses of a drawer in the counter closest to the kitchen table on her right and advances into the mudroom to open the metal fuse box that extends above her head on the left-hand wall. 

Flicking on the beam with a grimace, she stands on tiptoe to unlatch the catch closing the fuse-box and jerks it open. Shining the light inside, she reaches in and flicks the heavy switch for the main circuit breaker upward and then down. Nothing. 

Does it again with still no change. “Shoot!” she says quietly, leaning in to check the wires that run through, alongside, and above the breaker. Something shining catches her eye as she moves closer, and she takes note of exposed metal on the box’s wall and in front of it, a wire hangs free, rubber twisting away from the exposed copper of the filament itself. The line of the break is too clean for it to have frayed.

Someone had cut it.

“What the—?”

She feels a presence behind her as a heavy hand grabs her around the neck and a second hand cups her face, roughly yanking her back from the box. She struggles ferociously, instantly striking out with fists and feet, flashlight still clenched in her hand. Her attacker, however, nimbly evades her diminutive stature, releases her neck and wraps an arm around her midriff, hoisting her up without apparent effort or sound. She flails her arms and legs, one foot catching the corner of the fuse-box door and the flashlight connecting with something that has give—a shoulder, maybe, or a neck—and with a grunt, whoever grabbed her spins her around and slams her back into the mudroom wall, forcing the air from her lungs with a thump as though she has been punched in the diaphragm. 

Her still-outstretched wrist connects with the cinder block, and she hears at least one metacarpal bone snap as her fingers involuntarily loosen around the flashlight’s shaft. As it spins away from her the beam of the light catches part of a face with short dark hair, a strong jaw, and full lips. Rounding out the look is what appears to be a leather jacket with a turned-up collar. She knows it can’t be, and that he would never intentionally hurt her like this, but… “John?” she asks, still mostly breathless, and a pair of green eyes blaze in hatred as a hand belts her across the face.

Everything goes black.

...

When she comes to, she groans as her head moves upward. The flesh of her face is throbbing, and if she were to look at herself in the mirror, she is certain to see a bruise already blooming. Moving her upper body ever-so-slightly, she feels a white-hot pain shoot upward from her obviously broken wrist. She’s been tied to a kitchen chair with the contents of the linen closet, and feeling the pressure of rough cloth between her teeth and recognizing its pressure also around her face, the nurse realizes she has been gagged.

Immediately after ascertaining this, she jerks her head around and tries to loosen the bonds. “Ah ah ah,” a male voice cautions her, and out of the shadows steps the individual who had hit her. He is obviously not John Winchester, the rugged quiet man who had come into town twenty years ago, got himself hurt and dragged himself to the hospital and into her heart. But this man has the same strength of bearing and even a similar facial structure.

Finally wrenching her head enough and sinking her teeth into the cloth, she spits out the gag and snaps “Who are you? What are you doing—in my HOUSE, and-and what on earth do you _want?? _”__

__“One question at a time, sweetheart. You’re Kate Milligan, right?” He sounds totally relaxed, like he regularly comes into people’s houses, hits them, and ties them up to have all of his conversations. He moves a little closer now, eyes hard. “You’re a nurse at Mercy Hospital,” This isn’t a question. And then, “And twenty or so years ago, you patched up a guy who came in sliced up pretty bad in the stomach.”_ _

Kate’s blood runs cold. How can this be possible, that she’d only just been thinking about John and here this man comes asking questions? Her shocked recognition must show on her face, because the man now nods in bitter satisfaction, pacing across the kitchen with his eyes never leaving her. “Yeah, I thought so. Know who that guy was?” He stops moving. “My father. John Winchester. You sewed him up, which was fine,” suddenly lunging forward and putting both hands on the arms of the chair, he growls “but then you fucked him too.” Licking his lips, John’s son snarls “He was married. Did you know that? You disgraced him and my mom, and then my dad-” Leaning back now, the son laughs, a loud mirthless sound that cuts right to Kate’s heart. “-he didn’t forget. Came back to see you, multiple times, didn't he? And I didn’t know!” He gets in her face again and grabs her by the hair, forcing Kate to look up at him. “What did he do, huh? Tell you he loved you? Swear you were gonna get married someday?” He shakes her and relinquishes her head. She makes a small noise in the back of her throat and John’s son pulls a gun on her from out of the back of his waistband. “I’m sorry—what was that, _Kate _? I didn’t quite catch it.”_ ___

Kate swallows and does some quick calculations in her head. This man has not said anything about Adam. Maybe—maybe he doesn’t know about her having a son with John. If he’d only discovered about his father’s visits to Windom and concluded she must have been the sole reason why, maybe she can keep it that way. So she says sincerely, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that we dishonored your mother. If she was standing here right now, I would tell her that too.”

Something changes in this young man’s eyes and he spits “My mother’s DEAD. And you—you took—” He is breathing heavily as he lifts the gun away from her and shakes it up and down. But before Kate can breathe easy, he tucks the firearm back into his jeans and withdraws a serrated knife from the pocket of his jacket. “You even _look _—” Closing his eyes for an instant; he reaches forward and slashes her skin open just above the collarbone. Kate screams and tries to twist herself away, but he grabs her by the cheeks and jaw, looking at her in cold fury. “You look like my mother. You think John wanted you for any other reason?” He scrunches his lips upward slightly and sniffs. “Nah. You were just a replacement. A short-term, half-assed replacement.”__

_So why do you care so much? _Kate asks inwardly, but knows voicing that question aloud would not end well. Maybe she can connect to him, though, the way she does with some of her angriest patients—the ones who have the hardest times adjusting and dealing with pain, with feeling as if they’re broken. Maybe she can reach this man, help him some way. “You’re John’s son. What’s your name?” she tries.__

__

__The man huffs out an amused snort. He can tell what she is doing, and it ain’t gonna fly, but hell; may as well play along for shits and giggles. “Dean,” he says. “My name’s Dean Winchester.”_ _

“Dean,” Kate Milligan tries her best to smile at him, but her lip was split open from the belt across the face she had been given, so she hisses out an exhalation of pain instead. “Ooh… I understand you being angry. Really, I do.” She speaks gently. “To lose your mother and find out that your father… moved on, it’s, it must be painful. Devastatingly so.”

Dean nods and looks down and away, his jaw jumping. Kate thinks that she might have gotten through to him, that he sees her as compassionate, as someone good—but then his fist flies and connects with her abdomen this time. She hunches forward, gasping and gagging from the pain, but both her thick cloth bonds and Dean’s hard hands shove her back upright. His teeth are bared and eyes manically bright. “Don’t you DARE talk about my mother like that!” He grabs her by the front of her uniform and drags her face close to his, so close that she can count the freckles on his cheeks. “You think you understand this, Kate? Understand _me _?”__

____

____

Kate bows her head, long wisps of blonde hair falling into her face and an exhausted sob ripping from her throat against her will. “I’m trying to,” she whispers finally, and is shocked when he releases her scrubs and pushes her hair back.

“Good,” Dean responds roughly, but doesn't otherwise explain that response, and she sees in his eyes that she hasn’t gotten through to him. She has not changed his course of action, whatever it was that he wanted to do when he broke in here and cut her electrical wire.

“What—” her voice is so quiet it is not heard. She clears her throat and tries again. “What are you going to do to me now, Dean?”

“Oh,” chuffing out another mirthless laugh, Dean rises from the position he had crouched in and flips the knife in his hand. “I’m gonna make you sorry that you ever met my father, Kate.”

“You can’t,” she tells him defiantly, eyes rising up to meet his with ferocity. That’s it. She is done playing games, done trying to sympathize; if she tells him the truth, perhaps he will spare her. Perhaps not. But she has to try.

Dean’s eyebrows rise in elaborate shock at the woman’s defiance. “Oh, really? And why’s that?” He takes out a lighter from his jeans pocket and flicks it, letting the flame heat the blade of his knife.

Kate’s eyes follow the flickering blue-edged glow of the fire over the metal knife-edge and knows whatever he does next will be excruciating and her words will most likely send him over the edge, but she has to try to play her final card. “Because I had a son with him. And that boy is my whole world.”

Her chin is up and her eyes are blazing as a key turns in the lock of the door to the mudroom. Her gaze instantly shifts to the door in horror as it opens and her wonderful son in his fawn-colored jacket and dark-blue beanie enters with two large grocery bags. His head is lowered as he jiggles the key out of the lock. “Hey, Mom,” he calls out, "I got us some taco stuff for dinner, and there was an egg sale..." hefting the bags and at last looking up.

“Adam—” Kate’s eyes are full of fear and love and pain as she gazes at him. He drops the bags and starts forward as Dean turns in a blink and smoothly, with a movement almost too fast to see, drives the blade he had just heated up into the soft flesh at the base of her neck above her sternum.

“NO!!!!” Adam screams, voice cracking in agonized horror, and charges at Dean full-bore, but the larger man jerks his elbow upward and it connects with the younger man’s temple. He drops unconscious to the kitchen floor and Kate sobs and chokes, her esophagus rattling as she suffocates on air and blood; tied to a chair and unable to assist her son.

Dean wipes the place clean so there is no trace of him and leaves, stepping over Adam’s inert body and shooting his half-brother a glare of complete, utter contempt.

***

Adam Milligan opens his eyes to pain throbbing through his temples and at the back of his head, but also the awareness that the physical pain is nothing; that something much worse had happened—he raises his head blearily and sees the slumped form, blonde hair, and so much, so much blood. “No. No no nonononono, Mom? Oh God, Mom—” He lurches upright, almost tripping on a can of beans that had rolled free from one of the shopping bags he’d dropped.

Egg yolk is seeping into his shoes as he crunches over cracked shells and throws himself to his knees before his mother, putting steady fingers against her neck to check for a pulse. Nothing. He takes her face between his hands and lifts it. Heavy, so heavy. “Oh, Mom,” his eyes, already blurred from his head crashing into the linoleum when he fell, blur even more with tears. Her eyes are still open, fixed now on nothing but their last look was at him. He gulps and sobs now, trembling as he checks the horrible wound stretching above her clavicle bones where her blood is pooling and congealing.

He has to call the police and tell them…tell them what? He got home from the grocery store just in time to see his mother get stabbed in the neck by a man he hadn’t even seen clearly? It was dark, no lights on anywhere in the house, so the conversation would probably happen like this:

-Why are the lights out, son?  
-I don’t know, Officer, he must have cut the wires—or we blew a fuse. It happens.  
-Ok. Can you describe the assailant?  
-Uh, tallish. Dark. Was wearing a coat, I think. Oh yeah, and he had a GIGANTIC FUCKING KNIFE THAT HE STABBED MY MOM WITH, does that help?

…Yeah. That would go over really well. But he has to call the cops. He has to.

As he stands shakily, running his bloody hands down over his knees in only-half awareness and steeling himself to leave his mom and call 911, he hears a noise at the door and whirls, expecting the shadow-man back to finish the job.

But no. Standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the headlights of the car that are still on, stands a different man. Adam can tell this one is shorter and he wears a much longer coat, like a trench coat or something. The beam from the cracked flashlight is flickering, illuminating shiny dark shoes and suit slacks. Adam lunges across the floor and snatches up the flashlight to throw, or beat this guy with, or… “Oh, no,” the stranger murmurs, light eyes wide and sorrowful as he surveys the scene before him. “I am too late.”

No shit. Adam boils upright with a, "Who the HELL are you?? What are you here for, then? I get home just in time to see my mom _stabbed _to death! Who even does that? She's a nurse, she HELPS people...why...?" He has begun shaking. The shock is setting in, and as Adam sways slightly the man moves toward him, arm extended and eyes expressing sorrowful concern. But this does nothing for Adam. "DON'T fucking touch me," he spat. "Tell me who the fuck you are!"__

"My name is Castiel," the man says. "I am an angel of the Lord who has Fallen from Grace, and I am searching for my friends. One of whom I tracked here, but as I said, I arrived too late."

Adam sniffs and nods reflexively, bouncing a little bit on the balls of his feet as he looks down and then away. Perfect. This guy's obviously crazy, which does not help in this situation at all. He can hardly deal with what is happening anyway, and having some guy spout off about being an angel beside his mother's dead body...yeah, this is crap. And the worst thing Adam can think of at the moment is that his mother hasn't said _Language, Adam! _in response to his use of the word 'fuck'. He never cursed in front of her. She never cursed either; it was a decency thing. A respect for other people. Kate said she got cussed out enough at the hospital to lose her taste for doing it or hearing it. She would have torn him a new one for saying fuck AND hell. So he swallows hard and tries to think of something polite to say. "Uh, well...thanks for coming, I guess." That will have to do. It's polite enough.__

____

__He actually gets a _bow _from the crazy angel guy. "You are welcome, Adam Milligan." Adam feels his blood run cold. He hadn't introduced himself yet... it was pretty much the last thing on his mind right now. So how the hell did this crazy spiky-haired trench coated guy know who he was? Sure, their last name was on the mailbox, but his first… No. This is just nuts. He stares at the guy helplessly, jaw tight and eyes angry and confused and afraid. He can’t help being afraid, and he’s clutching the landline in his hand, the plastic of the receiver jittering against the counter. And then Castiel steps closer and lifts his hand, two fingers outstretched to gently touch Adam’s forehead. The young man is so confused and frightened and tired, in so much pain, that he just closes his eyes to let whatever is going to happen occur.____

Suddenly, the physical pain and the lump that had risen on Adam’s head over his left temple are gone as if they had never been. He snaps his eyes open and pans them around the room, expecting something to hit him, something else…his eyes catch on his mother’s form and he shudders before bringing the phone up sharply. Castiel -what kind of name IS that, anyway?- backs off, raising his hands non-threateningly and stepping carefully to the side near Kate but not too close to her body. His expression holds both concern and wariness, which makes Adam fumble with the buttons as he types nine-one-one into the keypad. He has to stop and start over again because his hands are shaking so much. Deep breaths, come on. Keep it together, Milligan. He swallows hard and dials again.

"9-1-1, what's your emergency?"

"Uh, this is Adam Milligan at—at …I came home from the grocery store, and my mom…” he is choking on tears again and swallows before blubbering out in a rush, “We had a home invasion and my mom was tied to a chair by some guy, and he stabbed her in the neck with a giant knife and knocked me out and there was so much, there was so much blood….”

“…I’m sorry, sir, will you repeat that last part? I didn’t catch it. You had a home invasion, and your mother what?”

"Sh-she's dead! My mom is dead. The son of a bitch stabbed her and ran away.”

"Are you certain she is dead? Is she totally unresponsive?”

"She got STABBED, she isn’t breathing, and I checked her pulse, okay? And with the amount of blood she lost there’s—there’s no way…” Adam trails off.

The dispatcher replies quickly “All right, we won’t need paramedics then. I will send the police. Are you still in danger?”

“I... don’t know, he might come back—”

“He won’t.” Comes a clipped, firm answer from Castiel. His tone is certain and brooks no argument, but that doesn't stop Adam from trying anyway.

“How do you know?” Adam snaps, lifting his mouth away from the phone.

“Sir? Adam?” The dispatcher’s voice is now uncertain.

“...Sorry. There’s a guy here trying to help. He showed up right after and—heard what happened.” There is silence for a moment and then noise in the background on the other end, what sounds like radio static. The dispatcher speaks again.

“Okay. I need you to tell me your address. Will you do that, Adam?”

“I—yeah, sure.” He sniffs and wipes his nose, then rattles off the address.

“Good, thank you. Someone will be there in less than ten minutes. I put in the call just now to the police and the mortuary.”

“Thank you,” Adam croaks, voice breaking a little as he closes his eyes and clenches the phone against his face. The mortuary. Of course. And they’ll probably have to do an autopsy, since it’s a homicide….

“Hang tight, okay?” The dispatcher says kindly. “The police are on their way. Goodbye, Adam.”

“'Bye,” Adam replies. He hangs up the phone and turns to see Castiel crouched before his mom, studying her wounds with concerned and critical eyes. He remains far enough back not to make any footprints in or smear the blood. Adam might be impressed by the care the other is taking if he wasn’t still on the fence about this guy and his whole ‘I’m a fallen angel’ thing. Plus there was that comment he made during Adam’s phone call. “How DO you know that maniac isn’t – isn’t gonna come back here?”

Castiel is silent for so long that Adam almost tells him to forget it, but then: “One of the friends I am searching for, I followed him here, but—” He cannot say anything else, because Adam has whipped around, sea-blue eyes horrified and huge.

“Are you saying your friend –your friend did this? What the hell kind of friends do you HAVE??”

“He is not himself,” Castiel asserts firmly. “This is not like him; he would not kill an innocent person.”

"Yeah?” Adam spits out with a bitter nod. “Well, maybe you don’t know him like you thought you did, because…” He loses his voice as he looks at his mother once again, and then adds softer, directing his words to her, crouching to her level, “…I wish I knew what happened, Mom. What was he doing here? Why’d he—why’d he do it? I wish you could tell me.” He chokes on a sob and swallows hard. “…I wish you were—okay….”

And then the police arrive, lights blazing on their cars but sirens off. Adam lifts his head as he sees the blazing undulating blue halos winking across the darkened walls through the windows and still-ajar side door. “I was…gonna get the rest of the bags out of the car,” Adam mumbles. The car whose lights are still on and “Now the battery’s probably dead. Or dying.” He sniffs and wipes his face as he stands to talk to the cops.

The officer in charge, a man of medium height with a self-important swagger, immediately cases the room and nods at his backup officer to check out the rest of the house. Then the coroners come in, eyes white and bulging at all of the viscera, and set down their gurney in the mudroom out of the way for now. The officer, whose nameplate reads ‘PERKINS’, levels his gaze at Adam and raps out, “You found the deceased?”

Adam blinks rapidly and nods. “…Yes, I did. Yes sir.”

The officer spreads his legs in a wide stance and slowly clicks his pen, jerking it at Adam as he had pointed it at the other officers to indicate that they do their jobs. “Start talking.”

Adam breathes out shakily and bounces on the balls of his feet. “…I had gone to the grocery store to get food for dinner, ‘cause—because Mom wasn’t home from work. I got back, saw her car here, came in, and…and…” Adam swallows hard, bitter bile rising in his throat as he thinks again about what happened. “I…I saw her tied up, to that chair,” he nods at it with his eyes closed. He cannot bear to see her slumped and bloody form again. As he speaks, tears squeeze out from his closed eyes and track down his cheeks. He opens them to say the next, looking over the cop’s shoulder as if he is still seeing what happened. “And…it was dark, he was a shadow, but he was—a tall man, wearing some kind of jacket, he st-stabbed her above the collarbone and when I ran at him he hit me across the head. Knocked me out, and…when I woke up he was gone.”

Adam swipes a hand down over his eyelids and cheeks to wipe away his tears. Similar to the way Dean does, Castiel notices. The angel has been standing at a respectful distance behind and to one side of the young man. Why that similarity should seem so important to him at this precise moment, the angel does not know; but he admires Adam for being able, and willing, to tell exactly what he had seen. Castiel can tell the law officer does not trust the young man's story - disbelief is rolling off of him in waves - but Adam solidly stands and looks into his face when his emotion permits. Such a thing takes immense strength of character and courage.

The officer taps his pen against the side of his small notebook. “What time did this happen? When did you return from the grocery store?”

“Um…thirty or forty-five minutes after Mom got off work. I wanted to have dinner ready for her when she got home, but…” Adam presses his lips inward and breathes through his nose to control himself. No more crying, Milligan. It won’t change anything. “And I was…I was awake for –less than fifteen minutes, I think. I didn’t look at the clock after waking up, but… I’d say it was less than half an hour before- Castiel showed up.” The other man nods his head as Adam indicates him, and the officer turns as well.

“And what were you doing in the vicinity, sir?” The cop says. Adam looks up as well, wondering if I was chasing after my psychotic friend is what the guy says, or if lying comes naturally to an angel. Yeah, right.

“I was travelling and noted the open door, so came in to offer my help,” says Castiel. Not lying, exactly, just omitting. And yet he did pretty much NOTHING, Adam thinks. Not fair, he knows; the supposed angel had somehow healed his wounds, but a bump on the head is a small price to pay for his mother still being alive, and Adam would’ve given anything for—he cuts himself off at that. Adam is a realist. He knows there is no way to change anything, so his next thought, his only thought as the cop continues to ask Castiel questions, is that he must find the guy who did this to his mother. And since Castiel knows him – is apparently his FRIEND – he will know where to look. And then Adam can find out why, and make that bastard pay. Somehow, he is going to make him sorry.


	7. Chapter Seven.

**A hotel room in Iowa. ******

********

********

“Where’ve you been, Dean?” Sam looks up from his computer and asks as his brother clatters into their room.

“Out,” Dean grunts, shedding his jacket like a second skin. “Got some burgers on the way back. You hungry?”

“On the way back from where?” Sam pushes his chair—it has wheels; they’d lucked out with this place; wifi AND wheel-y chairs—over and reaches into the crumpled fast-food bag. He doesn’t even care that it’s a greasy burger and not a salad; he’s freaking starving.

“Minnesota,” Dean responds, stuffing a few fries into his face. “Followed up on some intel we got from that angel we strung up last week.” Sam’s mouth is full but he raises his eyebrows questioningly. “I took care of business, Sammy,” the other responds shortly, tone of voice flat signalling he is done talking.

Sam isn’t, though. He swallows his bite of burger and says carefully, “Anything I need to know?”

Dean crosses to their little bathroom and turns on the sink, splashing water on his face and then beginning to scrub blood from a knife. “Nope. Had a sticky situation so I took care of it.” He shakes excess water droplets from the knife blade and dries it with a hand towel. “That's it.”

“Okay,” The other nods and scrunches his lips upward in a ‘that’s not really legitimate but for now I’m gonna believe you’ expression. He clears his throat and pulls his laptop back over. “So I was checking online police reports and news articles to see if Lucifer’s still after us.” 

Dean puts the now-shiny clean knife into a duffel bag, slings the towel over his right shoulder, and strides over next to Sam, looking down at him. “And?”

“And, nothing. It’s like the guy’s gone dark, completely off every grid. The only thing I found that was interesting, and maybe connected, is that -get this, Dean- Crowley’s missing.” He pulls up the newspaper article on the Louisville casino.

Dean, about to take a bite of his own burger, whips and ducks his head to stare at the screen. “What!? I nailed that sonofabitch down good! How the hell’d he escape?”

“I don’t know,” his brother shrugs. “But they’re saying he did.”

Scanning the article over Sam’s shoulder, the older Winchester scoffs. “They aren’t even SURE he escaped, Sam. They’re just guessin’. Look.” He points at the sentence and reads: “‘At least one and most three persons left the scene alive.’ They have no idea.” Sam smacks his brother’s greasy finger away from the laptop screen and glares. Dean pulls his head back along with his hand and huffs out a breath before shaking his head fondly. “Relax, little brother,” he adds in a jovial tone. “Since when have the cops actually discovered something significant about any of our types of cases, never mind legitimate. Huh?” He waits for an answer as he drops into the other chair.

“…Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Sam says slowly, studying the table and then looking up at Dean with a tiny nod.

“Damn right I’m right,” the elder grins. “Bitch.”

“Jerk. I’m gonna keep—keeping an eye out for him, though. In case he resurfaces anywhere...”

“O-kay,” Dean sighs. Of course, since this is Sammy, he’s not going to just be able to let this go and let them have a win against the Devil for once. “That’s fine. Meanwhile, I’m gonna celebrate that bastard bein’ gone with a beer. You want one?”

Sam shakes his head, avoiding his brother’s eyes. “No thanks, Dean. I’m—I’m full. And we still have to worry about being followed.” He taps the top of his computer with two fingers as he lowers it half-mast.

Dean lowers the beer from his lips as he digests the first part of what his brother said. Sam is full of demon blood. Great. That’s what they’d wanted, right? What they’d prepped for by doing this damn thing. He rolls his eyes with forced nonchalance. “Who’s followin’ us now? Does Oprah wanna feature us on her show? ‘The Cure of the Century—Two Brothers Drinking Demon Blood Lose Not Weight, But Humanity!’ See how they did it with your own eyes!!”

Sam sighs and cuts his eyes at his brother, pressing his lips flat and flaring his nostrils. "Oprah. Really, Dean? I meant _Cas. _”__

The smug smile at his awesome joke melts from Dean’s face and he sighs. “What about Cas?” he asks gruffly. He wishes his brother would just drop it, but Sammy has always been like a dog with a bone about shit like this. It’s heartwarming, really, but it also pisses him off.

“You know he isn’t gonna stop trying to help us, Dean. He’s probably out there right now.”

“Yeah, Sam, I know!” Dean snaps. He doesn't need to hear this. “But he SHOULD give up, dammit! We’d be better off.” _Or at least HE would be. I don’t need his blood on my hands too. ___

____

____

Sam cocks his head and scrutinizes Dean with that concerned, knowing expression of his. “Really, Dean? That’s what you think?”

Screw this. “Hell, I don’t know, Sam!” The elder’s voice rises now as he stands and flips his now-empty beer bottle into the trash. It ricochets off the wall and clangs into the can with a satisfying crunch of glass. “I just know we’ve made our friggin’ beds, and Cas isn’t gonna let us lie in ‘em, the stubborn bastard.” Looking down at the table and pinching his cheeks with his right hand, Dean mumbles: “He cares too fucking much.”

***

**Minnesota again.**

When the police officer has finished asking questions of Castiel, he closes his notepad with a snap and looks back at Adam. “Well, it’s pretty clear to me what happened here, but the coroner and lab will need to perform some tests on the body.”

_Tests? _Adam’s head shoots up. “What sort of tests? You need to get this asshole before the trail goes cold!”__

____

____

The cop stares him down. “Oh, I think that we can nail him easily.” With a significant look he adds, “Don’t leave town.” And then flipping a finger to point at Castiel too, he adds “either of you.”

What the hell?? “You—you can’t…seriously be saying what I think you’re saying!” Adam’s voice is shaking as he sees his mother lifted onto a stretcher in a body bag by the medical examiners on-scene. “Do you think…do you think that _I_ …?” He cannot even finish the question.

“Believe it, kid.” the officer’s voice is hard. “We have no corroborating evidence other than your word and the word of this stranger off the street. Since he isn’t local and no one can vouch for either of you…” he lets the insinuation hang in the air. “I can’t hold you on physical evidence as of yet, but this is an active crime scene, and your story is vague enough for you to have come back in time to kill your mom. Put your hands behind your back. I’m taking you down to the station, and will hold you until we—”

“He did not kill his mother.” This is from Castiel. The dark-haired individual had been standing back as the officer spoke, but comes forward after noticing something on the still-loose hanging breaker cable and seeing the policeman’s movement towards Adam. “And you will not find any evidence to prove otherwise." Cas adds, drawing himself up straight and moving to stand between the police officer and the young man.

“Excuse me?” the officer shoots back, stepping backward with eyes narrowing and finger rising to jab at Castiel's chest. “Listen, buddy, you’re a secondhand witness and already in hot water, so you might wanna keep your mouth shut right now.”

“No. YOU will listen,” The angel’s voice has risen and booms stridently around the room. His eyes are fierce and firm, looking like chips of ice in his face. He steels himself for what he is about to do, and tries to find the proper words to say, recalling references that Dean made in the past from what he said were spy movies: “I must blow my…deep cover for this, but you leave me no choice.” He withdraws his FBI credentials from his pocket and flips them in the officer’s face. “I am FBI agent Edward Moscone, and you have just jeopardized the efforts of an investigation I am currently running by accusing this man of the murder of his mother.”

Castiel’s shoulders stiffen with increasing discomfort as Adam stares at him with eyes wide and mouth slightly open. The Windom cop, however, is not so easily impressed. He snatches the badge away from the angel to study it closer, shining his flashlight on it. Shining the beam on Castiel, he snaps: “You say this is an open investigation you’re running?”

“Yes.” Castiel nods and swallows. “There has been a—series of killings, all brutal.” He hears Adam’s intake of breath and feels the young man flinch at that word. “All of the crime scenes have been nearly untraceable, save for this.” Castiel holds up one hand, which he had discreetly covered in the clean latex glove he pocketed after using the other one at the Kentucky crime scene.

“What is it?” the officer squints at what looks like pale powder on the supposed agent’s gloved fingers. 

“Sulphur residue, which I noticed on that exposed wire and which is in no way connected to Adam’s person or the grocery store he frequents.” Castiel nods at the broken breaker wire, and the cop nods at two of the lab technicians to take a closer look at it. He pinches the end of the glove between the fingers of his other hand. “I will give this to you for your lab,” he offers. The technicians look at the head officer uncertainly, and he jerks his head irritably for them to take the glove from this guy. “This residue has been found at other crime scenes. And the most recent instance occurred in Kentucky. I have a copy of the newspaper article that details what was discovered,” Castiel adds, waiting for the officer to respond. The officer scoffs and the angel squints, eyebrows drawing together. "Do you truly wish to test me? Here it is, then," and Cas snaps out the folded newspaper with a jerk. He is glad that he took note of the Winchesters' policy on keeping newspaper clippings.

Officer Perkins snatches the paper and holds it at arms-length and then, after no more than a cursory glance, "How do I know this is legitimate?" He barks.

Castiel is nonplussed. "It is a real newspaper," he says.

The officer's eyebrows come together as well. "I'm aware of that, _Agent _," he emphasizes the title snidely. "However, just the fact that you have this paper isn't gonna fly."__

____

____

Castiel cocks his head in confusion. "Of course it cannot fly, it does not have the means to-"

This is painful to watch. "He means you need somebody to back your story up," Adam interjects quietly. As Castiel turns to him the young man sighs and turns one hand palm-up. Hearing that the cops believe he killed his own mother, after the initial flurry of emotions, makes him feel exhausted. He wishes they would just get on with it. But the angel dude is seriously confused (and probably disturbed) to be trying so hard to prove that Adam is innocent. "Like...if you had a supervisor for this case, or...something...," he continues, not dreaming that the other can provide actual aid here. He appreciates the effort, but there's no way. The cop is right; there is no corroborating evidence, and he'd already made up his mind....

Thus the young man is legitimately shocked when Castiel's expression clears and the angel relaxes. Adam has no clue what kind of game this crazy guy thinks he is playing, but whatever kind it is, he seriously doubts that it will work. Who the hell can be RELAXED in a situation like this??

But Castiel turns back to Perkins and says "I have the name and information of the officer who assisted me in Kentucky," he speaks calmly. How does he have all this stuff? What the hell kind of game is he running here? The Windom officer wonders as the other withdraws a business card—from his breast pocket this time—and holds it up. The two-by-three inch rectangle reads:  
DETECTIVE LUCINDA MARTINEZ  
4TH DIV., METRO PRECINCT  
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

And alongside the info in a handwritten scrawl is: ‘Good luck, Eddie. If you need anything, call. ~ L’ along with a phone number. “I’m checking this out right now. Don’t move,” snaps the cop as he turns away from his two suspects and radios to Central Dispatch.

As Officer Perkins tells Central to run the Louisville detective's name through the system, Adam quietly groans and slides down to sit on the floor and buries his head in his hands. The angel kneels beside him. “Are you all right, Adam?” Castiel inquires, concerned.

“No!” Adam’s voice is muffled against the sleeve of his sweatshirt. He shifts his arms down with a helpless “Do you even know that cop? Or is that card fake like your badge?”

“I do know—”

“No talking over there!” Perkins snaps. “Okay, got it. Thanks, Dispatch. Out.” He slams the antenna of his walkie down and snaps it back onto his belt. “You’re lucky, Agent. Martinez’s name checks out. Now on to the story, which I’m sure is bull.” Thrusting the card back at Castiel: “Call her. Now.”

“It is rather late, would that not be an inconvenience?” the angel asks as he looks up into the officer’s face.

“Is prison more your sorta inconvenience? ‘Cause I’m all done playing games. And if you don’t call her, that’s where you’ll be first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Just…do what he says,” Adam whispers with a tiny warning tug on Castiel’s coat. “He isn’t screwing around.”

The angel presses his thin lips together. “Neither am I,” he retorts, looking back at Adam with a nod that he hopes conveys reassurance as he takes the detective's card from Perkins before withdrawing a cellphone. He types in the number.

An answer comes on the third ring. “Detective Lucy Martinez speaking.”

“Detective? This is…Agent Moscone. I apologize for calling so late.”

“Agent Eddie! I thought that was your voice. How goes the search? You find your partner with that BOLO I put out?”

“I…have not yet, no. But there is an officer here who requires assurance of my identity from you. If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. Put them on the line.”

“Thank you, Detective,” Castiel says as he prepares to hand the phone over.

The female officer’s voice is warm as she responds “Of course. And call me Lucy.”

Before Castiel can reply in the affirmative, the phone is jerked out of his hand by the officer facing him. “Enough chit-chat. Is this Detective Martinez?” the cop snaps into the phone.

The Louisville officer’s voice loses all of its warmth. “Yes it is. And who is this?”

“Officer Gregory Perkins, Windom police force.”

“...Windom? Where’s that?”

“Minnesota.”

"Figures." Martinez lets the snide tenor of her comment stand for a moment before expelling what might be a pent-up breath or more likely a scoff. "What's going down up there?"

"This man tells me he is an FBI agent in deep cover on a long-term case that apparently I just blew. Showed up after the brutal homicide of a single mother this evening, con _veniently _appearing to vouch for our suspect."__

Martinez's tone becomes sharp, alert. "You already have a suspect in custody?"

"Yes. The victim's son."

"And Agent Moscone says he's not guilty?"

"Right. He claims this murder follows the pattern of several others - including the recent mass one in your jurisdiction."

The detective inhales sharply. "Same M.O.? Evidence of torture and blood everywhere?"

"...Yes. Well, I wouldn't say blood was EVERYwhere, but the victim was tied up, and it was pretty clear she hadn't been killed right after that. Your boy was mainly focused on some sulphur residue he found, though."

"Shit. That sounds about right."

“‘about right' for what?"

There is a creaking sound on the line as the Louisville detective leans forward in her chair. "This agent has been on a case looking for his partner. There are serial homicides connected to that case, and all of them have one or multiple victims who've been tortured and killed. The same type of residue has been located at your scene and mine."

Officer Perkins' tone is incredulous and rising. Is this woman serious? This is bullshit. He just wants his shift to end so he can go home. And, honestly, how stupid does she think he is? "Are you tellin' me you beLIEVE this cock-and-bull story? Because honestly, chica, it's pretty fucking thin."

Martinez lets a long silence stretch on the line before replying, "You don't know me personally, so I'm going to let that insult slide, but I know good when I see it. In Homicide ya get used to bad; hell, so used to it that you become jaded. But this man is doing good. He's trying to find and bring to justice something evil that is making people die bloody, and if you don't listen to him and lock up the boy you've got in custody now after what this agent told you . . . well, buddy, you better start ordering some cartons of body bags. People are gonna keep on dying, and I _really _don't think you wanna be held personally responsible for making the wrong call on this. 'Specially at this point in your career. You're bucking for Sergeant, aren't you, Perkins?" She has pulled up his file via the inter-state police department database. Perkins is silent, and Lucy smirks. "Just think about it." After a slight pause she adds "Now, is that all you needed from me?"__

____

____

"Yes," he stiffly replies with teeth clenched. "Thank you, Detective."

Martinez returns brightly, "Glad I could help. You have a good night, now." Perkins grumbles something unintelligible in response and ends the call. All of the other officers and lab workers are carefully avoiding his eyes as he snaps the flip-phone closed. Everything on that detective had checked out, dammit. Not only is she a member of the fourth division of Louisville's PD, she is a highly esteemed member who had closed forty-five cases in the last year aLONE, which is practically heard of in a police force of comparative size. At least, that is what Greg Perkins tells himself as he straightens his uniform and tosses back the phone. Castiel catches it with a blink of confusion.

Adam’s eyes have gone wide and he shares a look with the angel, who continues to stare at him intently. Castiel knows that he needs to protect this young man because of who he is, but is unsure whether Adam knows the truth about his family and if not, whether it is Castiel’s place to tell him not only about his paternal parentage but exactly who killed his mother.

Adam does not appreciate the angel’s scrutiny and shifts from one foot to the other. “Hey. Uh, angel…Agent…whatever. Could you, uh, quit it with the blue lasers?” The other squints and cocks his head in response. Adam sighs. “Quit staring at me like that, okay? Please. I feel like… you’re waiting for me to explode or… something.”

Castiel/Eddie drops his eyes, abashed. “My apologies. I did not intend to make you uncomfortable.”

_Yeah, okay. _“It’s…fine. I just…” don’t want to deal with this. I wish I could wake up on the couch and that Mom isn’t home yet, and this is all a dream…a really shitty, really vivid dream. Adam closes his eyes tightly and wills himself to wake up, even going so far as to dig his nails into the inside of his arm, pinching himself until he draws blood. But neither of those actions cause him to wake, and then the policeman says that they may be in the clear tonight, but that he is going to check this out, and just because a Louie detective vouched for him doesn't get the agent off the hook.__

____

____

"I still have questions," Perkins says.

"That is a natural course of action for humans. You are inquisitive creatures. That is to say..., we are," the angel hastily amends.

Perkins gives both men a deluxe stink-eye. "You may have gotten vouched for, but you aren't off the hook. Keep yourselves available. Write your numbers and names down in here," and he shoves his notebook at Castiel. Looking at Adam he adds, "BOTH of you." The angel prints his phone number and signs _EDWARD MOSCONE _in flowing, elegant letters before offering the notebook to Adam.__

The young man takes the pad and asks as he scrawls his name, "Can I pack up some of my clothes and stuff, at least? It's upstairs, so I won't be bothering the...crime scene. And I don't know when I'll be back." Or if. He winces and ducks his head, not wanting to think about his house being a crime scene and not being able to return to it; knowing that it will be searched for evidence and dusted for fingerprints and turned upside-down by cops scouring every surface for clues . . . there is a roaring in his ears and his breath is coming short and sharp so that he barely hears the cop's reply of "All right, go ahead. But no funny business - come right back down."

Adam shoves the notebook back and drops it as he pushes away from the others to the stairs and staggers up to the second-floor landing and leans against the wall out of sight, gasping. He can't get enough air - can't breathe - and as his heartbeat thunders loud and louder the pre-med student realizes that he is hyperventilating. Lovely. Closing his eyes, Adam slides to sit with his back pressed against the wall, swallowing repeatedly. His mouth is so dry the sides of his throat feel as though they are sticking together, his palms are clammy, and his legs begin shaking.

Castiel can tell something else is wrong, something new. As soon as Adam is no longer in view and the police officer looks down to sign an evidence document for the Milwaukee lab, the angel disappears. One of the lab technicians looks up as she is holding a clipboard for Perkins to sign and yelps as she sees him there one second and gone the next. She nearly drops her load and the police officer chides “Did you get butterfingers all of a sudden? What gives?” And then he looks up and sees that Agent Moscone is gone. “Where the hell did he go? Did anyone see him? What is this, Keystone?!” he grumbles as everyone else in the room either shakes their heads or shrugs. Just what he needs, for one of his two circumstantial suspects to disappear right under his nose—never mind the fact that he had just been schooled by a hick detective from Kentucky, and everyone on his team now knows it. And yet they aren’t even LOOKING for the crazy FBI agent yet. “Well? What are you waiting for? Fan out and find him!”

Adam had pressed himself back into the doorway of his mother's room, which was just to the left of the stairs. Still not getting enough air, he rips off his beanie and presses it against his mouth as a makeshift baggie since he doesn't have a paper one to breathe in. He blows out his cheeks as the angel appears from thin air. "G-geezus!" Adam gasps out, falling backwards in shock. "What the-?"

"Adam, something else is wrong. What is it?"

“ _What is it? _Are you freakin’ serious right now?? My mother’s dead, there’s a cop in my house who thinks I killed her, I’m probably not gonna be able to come back here because it’s evidence or something, and oh yeah, some guy with freaky healing and teleportation powers randomly shows up in my house looking for his psychotic friend who ACTUALLY killed my mom. So, yeah, take your pick.” Adam gasps in fury. Good news is, he isn’t hyperventilating anymore because he had not been thinking about needing to breathe, he was just breathing. And though he is angry, his tachycardia has disappeared and his heart is once again beating at its normal speed.__

____

____

Castiel presses his hands together, feeling helpless. He has yet to understand the various reactions of humans, but he recognizes that he had perhaps asked a stupid question. "That was a poor choice of words on my part," he now says. "Please forgive me, Adam."

The other shrugs one shoulder in helpless irritation. "Well hey, you're an FBI agent, an angel, AND friends with a murderer, but hey you're also concerned about his victim. That's not an issue at all. Yeah. Totally normal." After a cessation of speech, Adam shoves away Castiel's concerned hand as the angel reaches down to help him stand. Instead the human pushes himself upright. "I don't need any more help, okay? Just...go downstairs, or...wherever you need to go to find your pal the murderer...." Heading into his room and jerking open drawers to grab clothes and stuff them into an overnight bag, Adam's shoulders slump and he turns to demand of Cas, "Why did you care so much that they were going to arrest me anyway? Don't you want your friend to stay free? Because...if Officer Perkins decides to believe us and that lady detective...then the cops'll be after him."

"I want him to be safe," says Castiel. "And I want to protect him and his family." The angel pauses. He must choose his words carefully now, as it is not his place to tell all that he knows about the Winchesters and Adam's connection to them. 

_"When humans want something really bad, they lie," _Dean had told him once. Castiel had not understood the meaning of that phrase when Dean said it, but listening to Adam's words causes the angel to believe that he is starting to comprehend his friend’s meaning. He knows that he will have to tell Adam the truth of his connection to his mother's killer, and yet he sees the temptation of lying in order to ease Adam's grief. In the space of a few hours, this human has gone through more horror than one should have to bear in a lifetime, much less in a single night.__

__

__Castiel wants to protect the young man from future horrors, and yet Adam is in danger because of his paternal parentage. Adam is a vessel as a member of John Winchester's bloodline, and if Michael decides to come down, this young man is the avenging angel’s next-best vessel for the Apocalypse._ _


	8. Chapter Eight.

**Sioux Falls. ******

********

********

It's three a.m. and the beer is gone. So is the whiskey - and for Bobby Singer, that is a tragedy. Not to mention an incredible feat. He rubs his eyes and vigorously scratches his beard, debating whether he should bother going to the store, never mind that he'd have to drive at least twenty miles to find one that is open twenty-four hours, and then instantly swears as he remembers he is wheelchair-bound. He can't drive with no legs, and purchasing a paraplegic-friendly vehicle is not exactly anybody's first priority during the impending Apocalypse. Especially not Bobby's.

Until he runs out of booze.

That hasn’t happened to him in years, not since he had to—had to shoot Karen the first time. The grizzled man shudders and wipes a hand over his cheeks before roaring in frustration and hurling his last whiskey bottle at the wall. It hits and falls with a clatter, the neck shattering against the floor, but that is not enough for Bobby. He rolls over to his gun cabinet and withdraws a rifle, cocked and loaded. He whips around and shoots it.

The sound tears through his house and echoes in his eardrums at a volume as ugly as all the worst nights of his life.

Bobby spins his wheelchair wildly, shooting outward and upward until there are no more bullets left in the gun, and then he flings it down with another inarticulate desperate shout. As he stops his ears are ringing and his eyes are wet.

And that is the moment someone begins pounding on his front door.

Before he can reload the gun to shoot whoever it is—or possibly to shoot himself—the door is blasted open by a well-placed boot and Sioux Falls sheriff Jody Mills rushes in with her pistol drawn.

“Well, that was fast,” he gets out gruffly. "I'll be damned."

“In this profession, you’ve got to be light on your feet.” Jody sweeps her eyes around as she fully enters the house and sees the damage the homeowner has done to his molding. “Jesus, Bobby. It sounded like you were fending off a six-person home invasion. You drunk again?”

“Not drunk enough,” he grunts. “And the only invader in my house tonight is you.” He roughly jerks the bill of his ball cap down and spins the wheels of his chair. “What’re you doin’ here, Sheriff?”

“My job,” she retorts. “I just got a call about repetitive disturbances in the form of gunshots. And it’s my job to keep an eye on you because your boys asked, and for my own sanity." She sighs and jerks her head at him, indicating her pistol. “Now are you gonna put the gun down so I can lower mine?”

“Ah, hell,” the middle-aged man mutters. He throws his arms out and lays the rifle down. “It ain’t loaded, Jody.”

“Not anyMORE,” Jody amends his statement “…because you just emptied it into your ceiling.” Both raise their eyes to see wood and plaster dust floating down from multiple gaping holes. Pale wood chips hang in splinters from the now-exposed timber, and bits of insulation catch on their ragged edges. The sheriff holsters her gun and comes closer, stepping carefully over shards of glass, the last remnants of the last of his whiskey. Placing her hands firmly on both of Bobby’s armrests, she crouches before his wheelchair. “Bobby. Tell me what’s going on with you. You’ve been erratic ever since…the revenant scare.” Her voice catches on the word ‘revenant’ and Bobby notices how pale and drawn her face is. She has dark circles under her eyes and more worry lines than usual. Against his own current inclinations and mental state, he sympathizes. She must not be sleeping much either since she lost her family. He knows not to tell her that she would not understand the way he feels, because he knows that she can. Better than anyone, even Sam and Dean.

As the middle-aged hunter thinks of those boys, he recalls their predicament and his last conversation with the angel Castiel. He lets out another shout and tries to jerk his chair away from Jody. He can’t help it; he’s in so much pain… he can’t take it—but Jody clamps down on his arms tightly. “Bobby, Bobby. What’s wrong? Hey,” she gently touches his face so he will look into her eyes. “I’m here to help you.” Her tone of voice is warm and sincere, and her light brown eyes are full of concern. She lets go of his arm and withdraws her hand from his cheek but remains on her knees before him. "Let me. Please."

The grizzled man looks at the sheriff from underneath the low bill of his baseball cap and mulls over what he can say; hell, what he even SHOULD say. She smiles at him softly and rubs his arm in a motherly gesture of pacification. He grunts and feels himself relax a bit. “How’s it you c’n somehow always manage to get through to me, Jody?”

“Because I know underneath that crotchety drunkenness is a good man,” she says briskly, patting his arm and standing up. “May not show it that often, but you’ve got decency inside you, Bobby Singer. There’s a reason I haven’t run you out of town.” Bobby snorts and rolls his eyes, but Jody isn’t finished. “It’s the same reason those Winchester boys ask for your help as much as they do. They love you, Bobby. So do I.” Bobby’s eyebrows creep up. He hadn’t realized how much the sheriff paid attention to him and his boys.

“Guess somethin’ came outta all those drunk and disorderlies, huh?” he cracks.

“Oh come on—I wasn’t even going to bring that up!”

“Really? I call bull,” he harrumphs. She laughs and steps back a little. Now that they’ve cleared the air… “Alright. If you really wanna know what’s been goin’ on that made me discharge my gun, I’ll tell ya. But you may not believe me—and even if you do, you ain’t gonna like it.”

The sheriff crosses her arms over her chest and raises an expectant eyebrow. “What could you tell me that’s worse than the end of the world?” she asks.

Bobby closes his eyes and shakes his head once before speaking. “My boys… they’re in trouble. Sam isn’t sayin’ yes to the Devil—instead he’s usin’ his demon blood powers again as the Boy King. Head demon driver. And Dean…” Bobby can still hardly believe this, even after Castiel’s words, his own tabs, and research. “…he’s a demon. Crossin’ the country with Sam and leavin’ a trail of bodies—innocent people—in their wake.” Bobby gets choked up for real now, thinking of everything he has found out since he spoke to that incredibly frustrating but well-meaning angel. After the massacre in Louisville, a woman had been killed in Minnesota and the boys are still on the go with no end in sight. “And there isn’t a damn thing I can do for ‘em,” he adds softly.

“Oh, Bobby.” Jody’s eyes are wide and filled with empathetic pain. “I am so sorry.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Jody.” He breathes out through clenched teeth and continues “But the bitch of it is—if I had HELPED ‘em—if I hadn’t been having myself a pity party after shootin’ Karen; If I hadn’t let that break me….” He shouts “I had the chance to save them, dammit! Stop Sam from doing such a fool thing, and Dean—wait’ll I get my hands on that boy. Idjits, the both of them!”

“You need a drink, don’t you?” After a small pause, “Hell, I could use one.”

“I don’t have anything left,” he grumbles ruefully. “Drank it all. That’s…actually why I started shootin’.”

The sheriff stares at him and makes a decision. “That’s it, Bobby Singer. Get your coat. You’re comin’ with me to the store and we’re gonna get you some food, supplies, and decent booze.”

“Now wait a minute, Sheriff—” he tries to protest.

“Uh-uh. You need your energy to do more research and save those boys. Come on.” When Bobby does not move, she grabs a blanket from the couch, throws it across his legs, and pushes his wheelchair through the kitchen and to the door.

“You’re some kind of woman, Jody Mills. Stubborn as all hell.” 

“Damn right. And you’re gonna accept my help so your boys don’t start ANOTHER apocalypse, okay?”

“Aw, c’mon,” Bobby whines as she pushes his chair down the little ramp that had hastily been installed over his front steps. Luckily he had so much excess lumber and corrugated metal around it had been easy to make. “Jody, you can’t seriously—”

“Shut your mouth, Robert Singer,” she says firmly, jerking one thumb to point to herself. “Serve and protect, remember? That’s my job.” She hauls his chair around to the passenger side of her truck and opens the door. She gives the man a stern look. “And I do mean serve,” she says pointedly. “Grab ahold of the runner, Bobby.” Seeing that Jody is not going to take ‘no’ for an answer, Bobby shifts himself forward in his wheelchair and uses his hands to swing one useless leg after the other to rest against the ground rather than on the wheelchair pedals. With a grunt and a push, he lifts his upper body and drags himself onto the truck’s runner, a couple inches of metal and rubber that stretch under the door for use as a foothold. Or in this case, a butthold. Grumbling to himself about how useless this is, a literal pain in his ass, Bobby reaches backwards and grabs the lip of the truck’s door. Jody comes around and looks at him. “Now you aren’t gonna like this, Bobby,” she says briskly. “But you’re gonna hafta deal with it. I’m gonna pick you up so you can sit in the seat. Okay? One, two—”

“Now hold on a minute,” he protests. “You sure you can handle my ass? I’m not exactly a lightweight, y’know.”

She scoffs. “Bobby, I have dragged a 200-pound man out of a busted up car. It’s all in how you lift. From the legs, not the back.” She crouches and readies her hands to grab both of his sides. “Ready?”

“I guess I have to be,” he says. 

She nods. “Three!” and with his help grabbing the cloth of the truck’s seat, the sheriff hauls her constituent up into her truck. Breathing like a winded horse, Bobby pulls each of his legs into the truck and then resituates his cap on his hair. Tossing his blanket onto the seat behind him and the wheelchair into the truck bed before slapping the side of the vehicle as she closes the door, Jody adds “You’re welcome.” She smirks as his baleful glare follows her to the driver’s side door. Then his expression softens and he nods to the sheriff as she fastens her seatbelt and starts the engine. “Buckle up,” she orders. He does.

Bobby sighs as the sheriff’s vehicle pulls out of his junkyard and heads to whatever store is open at five in the morning. He still feels useless, but hell, what else has he got to lose?

***  


**Hotel #x. ******

Sam is wide-awake at 3 a.m. with his laptop lit, researching.

Some things never change. Old habits—they don’t just die hard, but become ingrained in the everyday, even the most mundane. Like coffee. Sam never liked the taste but would drink it to fuel his days and nights working on research in college and then for a case. Now he isn’t even ON a case, but on a steady diet of demon blood to fuel his mojo. And yet he still makes coffee. He is sipping some right now as he scours the Internet for signs of Lucifer, but still nothing.

Ever since he and Dean tortured Crowley and killed the Hell-king’s sixty-four strong demonic entourage, things have been quiet. Too quiet. No one-and-done demon massacre is enough to take the DEVIL off the board. No way. So what is he doing? Where did he go? Sure, Crowley had probably gone to ground if he knew what was good for him. If the sly sonofabitch had gotten free and held out against the lethal effects of Dean’s tortures, he would not be idiotic enough to go after the Big Bad Boss without a weapon or a plan. Never mind that all of his backup was gone, finished, kaput. Sam lets out a small huff of satisfaction. One fell swoop, and it hadn’t even been all that—

“Not bad,” an amused voice drawled. “Not too shabby, Sammy.” Sam’s eyes widen and he sucks in a breath, mouth opening in an ‘O’ as he whips his head up to stare at the figure with slightly spiky blonde hair and an upturned nose who has just appeared leaning against the wall. His sunken eyes twinkle as he stands up from where he’d leaned with arms crossed. “Sooo. I hear you’re searching for me.” He strides closer, cocks his head, and taps his chin. “How’s that going?” Sam makes a movement as if to shoot him or call for help, but the other clicks his tongue and shakes his head slowly. “Oh, come on now, Sam—there’s only one place I could possibly be. And it’s no good yelling about it.” He wrinkles his nose and waggles his fingers. “Don’t want things to get…messy.”

“Oh yeah?” Sam clenches his fists and breathes hard, demon-blood power welling up as he spits out “Why shouldn’t they? And where the hell are you, then? Enlighten me.”

The Devil’s eyes twinkle even as he pushes out his lower lip in a pout. “Aw little Sammy's growing up. But it’s no fun if I tell you—I want you to guess! It’s all part of the _game _.”__

____

____

“I don’t have time for your games,” Sam shakes his head and twists his torso, reaching for a book. “I’ll just have to find—”

Lucifer leaps forward and slams both hands on top of the leather-bound tome and the table beneath it, pinning everything down and staring at the Winchester. “You don’t get it,” he crooned, voice singsong and eyes deadly serious. “You don’t NEED to find me, Sam-I-Am. I’m already _right here _. Inside your head.”__

__

____

He taps his own skull firmly three times, and Sam winces, once – twice – thrice, before letting out a choked whisper. “No…”

“Oh, yes. Ever since you started embracing your powers. That called me, and your constant searching just invited me in.” He leans in, eyes glowing, and continues with a feral grin, “We’re roomies now, buddy boy. You just had to scratch that itch…and you aren’t gonna get away. Trust me.” He winks and then, leaning in, traces a gentle line down Sam’s arm as the Winchester shudders but somehow cannot jerk away. “I’m touched, really. You’ve made yourself primed and ready for the end without me doing a thing! And you know I’m right. You’ve done this to yourself, Sam; made yourself the worst thing all on your own; a bloodsucking freak – a _real _monster.” He clucks sympathetically at the look of horror in Sam’s eyes and leans backward as the other shakes his head frenetically. “You know I’d never lie to you….”__

____

____

...Sam writhes away from Lucifer and throws himself out of his chair, shoving back from the table—but as he does so, he sees no one there. Only himself, the table on which his computer sits still, his now-upturned chair, and books all over the floor.

“Dude. Looks like a tornado came through here. Didn’t think we were in Kansas anymore,” snorts the voice of his brother. Dean has just opened their door and enters now, grinning broadly as he sees Sam’s agitated state. “Didja have a ‘failed test’ dream again? Bet you still hate those, heh. Don’t sweat it, Sammy—just do what I did in school. Don’t care.” He puts down the bag of supplies he is holding and then looks at his brother closer. Something is off. The other isn’t saying anything in reply, not even giving Dean one of his classic bitch-faces. “…Sam? Hey,” Dean comes around the table and rights the chair before stopping in front of his younger brother. He reaches out and touches Sam on the shoulder.

Sam moves like lightning, his right hand shooting out to grab Dean’s neck and pin him against the wall, power around his throat. White-hot fury pounds through the younger Winchester’s veins. “Show yourself, you—you son of a bitch! Where the hell’d you go??” He flings his brother over top of the table with demon-blood power. “You aren’t fooling me— _get out of my head!!! _”__

____

____

“—whoa, Sammy,” Dean coughs out as he gets to his knees, wincing in pain. Body low and hand stretched out with palm raised, he continues placating. “I may like messin’ with ya, but trust me; I do NOT want to be inside your head. Yeesh.” He shudders dramatically.

Sam stares, eyes cloudy and dark with power as he tries to run through what this being is saying, if it is truly Dean or Lucifer screwing with him. “…Really?”

“Yeah, really. I don’t need to be stuck in the mind of a nerd; got enough crap to deal with as it is. Now are you gonna ice me, or are ya gonna explain what’s goin’ on here, Sam?”

“Dean,” Sam breathes a sigh of relief and the last of his blood-power lifts from his brother’s body. Dean collapses to the floor with a sharp grunt. “Thank God it’s you.”

“Well, duh, Sam. Who else would it be?”

“Lucifer.” Sam responds without hesitation.

“Seriously?” Dean snaps. Sam nods. “What the hell—we can’t even FIND his ass, and what, you hallucinated me turning into him?? You’re not even detoxing at this point, Sam!”

“It wasn’t like that, Dean. He—he showed up and talked to me. While I was searching. Said I didn’t do too badly in Crowley’s casino, killing all those demons. But he told me…I-I didn’t need to keep looking for him because—” Sam sucks in a breath, trying to steady himself. He has to say this. He has to. “—because he’s, he said he’s already here, inside my head.” Sam bites his lower lip, eyes now hazel again; wide and wet and horrified. “Dean, I’m scared. What if—what if he’s right?”

Dean licks his lips and blinks, moving close. He focuses intently on his brother’s face. “What would make him right? Has he said shit like that before?”

“Yeah…”

“Uh, damn RIGHT yeah, ‘cause he’s the fuckin’ _Devil _, Sam! Gets off on lying and cheating and torturin’ …what?” Sam makes a slightly weak sound of dissenting protest, stopping his brother mid-rant.__

____

____

“Dean, Lucifer has always told me the truth.”

“How the hell do you _know _that?”__

____

____

“Because he told me. And everything that’s happened since—”

“So you believed him. Christ, Sammy, this is your problem. You’re too damn trusting. Always have been.”

Choosing to ignore his brother’s response, Sam asks “What would be the point of Lucifer lying to me, Dean? He knows me now, and if he’s still after my consent, to get it he has to tell me the truth about what I’m getting into.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa—hold the fuck up. Time out. You told me you were sayin’ ‘no’, remember? You said you’d never say yes to the freakin’ Devil! Don’t tell me you’re goin’ back on that now!”

“No, I’m not. My ‘no’ still stands, Dean.” The elder Winchester’s shoulders relax slightly but stiffen again as his brother continues: “I just—I wonder if it matters? I mean, with…with everything we’re doing—everything I’M doing—” Sam swallows and rolls his lips, squaring his shoulders to force himself to say these things. “I wonder if it’s bad enough to make me like him. Have I made myself the perfect vessel for the Devil by becoming a monster?”

Dean freezes and stares at his brother. He can’t deal with this—he had just driven to get supplies and now he has to talk Sam off the edge by dealing with his psyche??? Shit, no. Being a demon doesn’t give him the power of Doctor Phil. But his brother is still standing there, puppy-dog eyes pleading for Dean to say something. Anything.

Dean sighs. The fact that Sam is still so concerned about being a monster, after everything, even though he has no idea what Dean had done to Kate Milligan as of yet, is fuckin incredible. It’s so much like how he would never allow Dean to explain away where their dad was or why they didn’t have a mom when they were kids. That has always been Sammy—he won’t allow himself to be comforted by empty false words. “Look,” he speaks heavily now. “We gotta do what we’ve gotta do, Sam. These are the cards we’ve been dealt. If we’re gonna stop the Apocalypse from happenin’, this is the way.” He looks directly into his brother’s eyes and grips the taller man by the shoulders, shaking him fiercely once. “You’re doin’ what you’ve gotta do to survive this. And if you’re worried about the Devil breaking in... don’t. You’ve got the best control of your mind I’ve ever seen, Sam. Amd you’ve got me. I’m not going to let that happen. Okay?”

Sam bites his lip and nods, looking down at his feet and then back up at his brother. He doesn't seem convinced, but does his best to smile. “...Okay. Thanks, Dean.”

Dean scoffs fondly. “Sure thing, kiddo.” Then he changes tack. “Well, this body’s beat so I’m gonna hit the hay. Gotta keep my meatsuit intact, y’know? Even if it’s still me.” He winks to lighten the mood and then adds “You oughta get some sleep too, Sammy. The research’ll still be there in the mornin’. C'mon.”

Sam looks from his computer to his brother with indecision wrinkling his forehead. At last he snaps the laptop shut and grumbles “Okay, fine. Screw Lucifer; I’m gonna take a shower.”

“That’s the spirit!” Dean crows, shedding his boots and jeans before stretching out on the right-hand bed. “’Night, Sammy.”

“G’night, Dean.” Sam goes into the bathroom and closes the door grabbing his pajamas and toiletry bag. He lets the hot water of the shower loosen up the tense muscles in his back and attempts to loosen the tension in his mind too. His brother’s words keep playing in his head. He has to do this, play the game, and follow the part he had chosen for himself. They can stop the Apocalypse if he does this. And the most important thing is that Sam had made the choice to use his powers for himself without coercion after weighing his options and talking to Dean. He can deal with it. He has to deal with it.

Sam turns off the water after wrestling with himself in the wash and comes out of the bathroom to see Dean sprawled face down on top of the blanket on his bed, out cold. Must be nice for his brother to fall asleep quickly for once. Sam smiles and then recalls his own predicament. Propping up his head and back with a pillow and stretching his legs out on his own bed, Sam sighs. It’s going to be a long night.

***

Dean doesn’t know how he can still sleep, or even why he would need to as a demon—other than to keep his mind and body sharp. But hell, apparently old habits die hard. 

He definitely does not expect to dream in this state of being, but suddenly there he is in a dark room with his gun at the ready. Great. Can’t even relax in his sleep. Ah well, at least he knows he can kill some'a these bitches even in dreams. But as he stealthily moves forward, another figure catches him off-guard coming from his left side and slams his back into a wall behind him. 

“Go back to Hell, you demonic son of a bitch!” 

…That voice—it is HIS voice, slightly younger and higher-pitched, but still his. And then a shaft of light illuminates Dean’s face as he struggles, and the green eyes in front of him widen. “What the fu—” His younger self hisses, and Dean in the dream tries to say something, to explain himself and his reasons for being a demon, but the look of pure disgust on the face of his younger self cuts him short before he even starts to speak. And then his younger self snaps a hand around Dean’s throat and spits “Lemme guess—you’re doing this to ‘help Sammy’, right? Well, that’s bullshit. None of the things you’re doin’—none of the crap you’ve pulled has _ever _helped him. You’re just dragging him down because YOU can’t stand being alone. You’re the monster here, Dean. You’re the freak.” His own face morphs into Sam’s during that final statement. Sam’s face is young, heartbroken, and angry.__

____

____

“Sammy—” Dean automatically tries to raise an arm and finds that he is no longer being pinned to the wall. He can clap his brother on the shoulder, but freezes before doing so. Can’t be feelin’ all over the place right now. Come on, Dean, get a grip. 

“You are what Dad made you,” Sam says—and he looks the way he did the night he left for Stanford, gangly and stubborn and furious, and then he looks like he had on Halloween night five years ago. “I could’ve lived, I could’ve been normal at school, Dean—but you had to show up and drag my ass back in.” He cocks his head, the fringe of his bangs fluffing out just a little. “What was it I said that night? Do you remember?”

“Sam, stop.” Dean gets out. “I don’t—”

“I told you that you could do it. You could find Dad on your own,” dream-Sam continues relentlessly, stepping closer undeterred by his older brother’s discomfort. “You know what you said to me?” His voice is sharp and fierce and serious as he stands close enough for his warm breath to hit his brother in the face. 

Dean nods and closes his eyes. A single tear leaks from the left one and drips onto his cheek. “…Yeah. I said I didn’t want to.”

“You didn’t want to. That’s the kicker, the old family standby. And look what happened, Dean! Starting with Jessica!!” Sam chokes up and Dean opens his eyes to see that his brother’s hazel orbs are full of tears. They harden with hate as his tone of voice does. “She died because of you. Because YOU took me away. And I hate you for that, Dean. I hate you.”

Dean’s heart skips a beat and his stomach drops to the floor. “No, no you don’t. You can’t.” His voice breaks. He tries to convince this dream Sam as he tries to convince himself. “C’mon… this isn’t you, Sammy. I’ve taken care of you your entire life.” You can’t hate me, I already hate myself but if you hate me too, I’ll break.

“Yeah? Yeah?! LOOK at me!” Sam ages as he spreads out his arms, and Dean sees demon blood spreading too, sluicing through veins across his little brother’s skin like poison. He sees the haunted look in Sam’s eyes as they darken to black… Oh God, no. “You did this to me, Dean. You made it possible. If you’d helped me control it—if you hadn’t gone to Hell…” Sam pulls back his head and shakes it. “You should have let me go.” He sways and falls forward the way he had when he was knifed in the spine.

“NO!!!” Dean screams. He can’t help it; even now, even here, after so much he runs and drops to his knees before his baby brother frenzied. Don’t be dead don’t be dead don’t be dead. “Sam—hey! Hey, Sammy—”

But instead of slumping forward in death the way he had in reality, Sam opens bright yellow eyes and rises, head cocked at an impossible angle and teeth bared in a manic grin. “You did this, Dean. You made me into a monster.”

And Sam now morphs into Mary, her face drawn, her eyes so loving and so sad. “Oh, Dean…” she reaches out to touch his cheek, voice choked and expression heartbroken. “I never wanted this for you. My little angel.” He lets out a sob as he remains kneeling and her eyes grow shocked and distant as if she sees something he cannot; as if she sees his life laid out in front of her and knows all that has happened. “Sammy,” she breathes, and then wildly demands of her oldest child “What happened to him? What happened to my baby?!”

“Mom, I—” Dean scrambles to his feet.

“You what, Dean? What did you do?” Her tone, cold and angry and firm now, stabs right into his heart as does the betrayed expression in her eyes. But before he can answer or even try to explain, those eyes turn into a bright clear blue. The hair is short and messy and dark now, and the slightly rumpled but ever-present business clothes appear... That firm hand on his right shoulder….

“Cas,” Dean breathes thankfully. Relief washes over him. Maybe the two of them can make a plan, surely they can fix this—but those hopes are dashed as the angel speaks heavily and pulls his hand away.

“Dean. I cannot save you.”

_No! _Dean wrenches himself upright with an agonized shout.__

... And wakes up in a bed in a hotel room—with not Cas but Sam hovering over him. His mother, his angel, and his younger self are gone. This version of Sam is looking at him with not hatred but concern. “What’s going on, Dean? You were thrashing like hell over there. Everything okay?”

Dean sits up and throws his blankets off. The bedclothes had twined and twisted around him even though he could’ve sworn he had fallen asleep on TOP of the covers. Sam moves backwards a bit, eyes wide and worried. Dean figures that he has to say…well, SOMEthing to ease the other’s mind. But hell, everything is most definitely not okay. He does his best to put on a cocky tone. “It was just a dream, Sam. I’ll be fine.”

“Dean, are you sure? It seemed—”

“I’m _fine _, Sam. It was a friggin’ dream. And no, it wasn’t like one’a your freaky psychic visions, okay? Just a regular old run-of-the-mill nightmare.”__

__

____

A run-of-the-mill nightmare. Yeah, sure, because typical nightmares have Mr. Tough Guy Dean Winchester screaming and whimpering like a little kid who’s afraid of the dark. But Sam knows his brother isn’t going to elaborate no matter how hard he pushes. He will have to wait for Dean to explain what happened in his own time and on his own terms. But he isn’t holding his breath. “…If you say so,” the younger Winchester responds slowly.

“Yeah. I do.”

Sam nods and sits back down on his own bed. Its sheets are barely rumpled; he obviously has not slept. But he sits and waits patiently for his brother to explain more, if he will. Dean sniffs and rubs a shaking hand across his face.

“It just…showed me some things, Sam." Sometimes doin’ what you think you gotta do is the worst thing, the thing that makes you monstrous. No. He can’t say that to his brother, especially not after Sam had worried aloud to him about seeing Lucifer and what that meant. The only way through this shit is the way they chose. So he continues: “—sometimes doin' what you've gotta do, it seems wrong.” Dean fumbles for the right words. This is so not his forte. “It ain’t understandable to anyone else, y’know?”

Sam nods. “Like the way Dad raised us.”

Smart kid. He gets it, as always. “Yeah, exactly. So we deal with this just like we always do and keep goin’. Okay?”

“…Okay, Dean.” Whatever you say, man. Until you get tired of lying to yourself. And to me. But he cannot say that unless he wants his brother to blow up at him, and frankly, Sam is too tired to deal with that right now. So he swipes a hand across his face and pushes back his hair before adding “But if you need to talk about it, you know I’m here, right?”

“Dude.” Dean holds out his right hand, palm half-raised. “No chick-flick moments, c’mon.” Sam huffs in exasperated amusement as his brother continues, “Now are you gonna try to sleep, or should we get movin’? I’ll put on some soft rock in the car; conk you right out.”

Sam lets out a real laugh this time. "Sure, let's go." His brother is right; he may as well get some rest in the car, if he can. There's no way in hell he is going to fall asleep here. It takes them less than ten minutes to pack up, Dean stops by the front desk with their key -waking up the dozing night attendant- and off they go on the road again.

***

**Outside an Iowa gas station. ******

Adam has no idea how this angel gets anything done.

He drives like a ninety-year-old with arthritis; the car jumps and jerks as he stops and starts pressing his foot on the gas. This came to Adam’s attention after he had to ditch his own car—following Castiel was not a viable option with the herkiness and jerkiness of his driving, never mind the fact that the Milligan car needed to be kept for evidence.

This is, of course, after they had to drive to the police station and make official statements. Apparently answering all of those questions at the scene and giving Officer Perkins their phone numbers was not “official” enough. But at least they are not considered suspects now. They have that going for them. No idea how long it will _last _….__

The two sat for who knew how long inside the station, listening to phones ringing and seeing people being taken to holding cells; a drunk with a cut over one eye lay snoring on a bench. The angel had wanted to heal his still-bleeding wound, but Adam talked Castiel out of doing that by explaining that he would only be drawing attention to himself. “And you’re an FBI agent, remember? I highly doubt that job gives you crazy healing powers,” he hissed.

“Of course not. My powers come from—”

“Your angelic Grace or whatever. Yeah, yeah I know. But didn’t you tell me that you’re LOSING that? Might be a good idea to, uh…save your strength.” Castiel had nodded and that fiasco was narrowly avoided. They signed off on their written statements as the sun was rising, and Adam was told that his car needed to be impounded. “This is bullshit,” he muttered, but at that point he would have done anything to make them leave him alone. So he took his bags out of the backseat and gave the Windom police department his key to his car and effectively the key to his past.

He stood outside the precinct building in downtown Windom with a cold wind blowing, Adam hunched his shoulders and ducked his head. He was ready to go looking for a hotel when Castiel stopped him.

“Adam, I have a-an usable vehicle.” He gestures at the car he’d been driving—a low-hung tan Lincoln that looked like it had seen better days. “Is there anywhere that I might drive you?”

Adam blew out a long slow breath of air and bounced on his heels as he made a decision before looking up at the angelic FBI agent from underneath the brim of his beanie. “Yeah,” the young man worked his jaw a little. “…There is.”

Castiel’s hair ruffled in the wind as he squinted ever-so-slightly. “What is the place? I promise to take you wherever you wish to go. It is…the least that I can do.” _Is that how humans say it? _The angel wondered.__

____

____

But before he could discern whether his phrasing had been correct, he was arrested in place as his companion replied stolidly, his tone of voice flat: “Take me to the bastard that killed my mother.” 

Which is how Adam now finds himself waiting impatiently, for what seems like hours, in the passenger seat of a 1978 Lincoln Continental outside a Gas ‘n Sip somewhere in Iowa.

***

Castiel is at a loss. He had promised to take Adam wherever the young man needed to go, and he does not wish to renege on his word. Yet the safety of both of his friends as well as of the human currently in his charge is at stake, and to put it simply, the angel is worried. If he brings Adam to Sam and Dean once he finds them, the outcome of their meeting cannot be measured by any of his previous experiences with the Winchesters. Because Dean now has no soul and Sam commands all of his blood-borne powers, Cas is concerned what will happen to Adam if he comes into contact with them. The young man appears to believe –at least somewhat– in the angel’s divinity, but he has not been exposed to the hunting life or the sheer amount of supernatural entities that his older half-brothers have. He does not even know that the Winchesters ARE his brothers; and therein lies yet another dilemma for the angel. How much can he tell Adam about all of this, and is it even his place to do so?

“Uh, are you…are you gonna buy that?” a voice clears its throat, and Adam is now standing slightly behind Castiel, hands in pockets. “I was waiting in the car, but…you were takin’ a while.” He nods at the rack of colorful magazines in front of which the angel is standing.

“Oh no, I am—I was lost in thought, as you humans say. These publications are favorites of my friend.” He gestures to one that has a striking dark-haired woman on its cover. 'Busty Asian Beauties' is the title emblazoned across the top.

Adam raises his eyebrows. “ _Porn _magazines? Really? …Wow. Your friend must be one hell of a guy.” He scoffs and moves sideways to get some snacks and a bottle of water. Spotting some Coca-Cola, he shrugs and grabs a couple of those as well.__

__“He is quite a specimen, yes.” Castiel responds, utterly serious._ _

__“Whoa.” Adam’s head shoots up and his eyes widen a little. “You can stop there, Castiel. I don’t need the tinder profile.”_ _

__“I simply mean that he is a man who does what he must. He and his brother both.” The angel takes a magazine between his hands and squeezes its cover slightly. “They travel from place to place saving others by hunting things, and so this is one of Dean’s few luxuries that he can find and purchase wherever there are Gas ‘n Sips.”_ _

__Adam, holding several bags of chips, protein bars, and bottles of water and soda, is intrigued in spite of himself. Not about the porn, but— “What kinds of ‘things’ do they save people from? I don’t think deer are homicidal. They may be overpopulating residential areas in some states, but—”_ _

__“They hunt things far more dangerous than deer.”_ _

__“Okay, so...bears? Mountain lions?”_ _

__“No. Things far more dangerous, and strange.”_ _

__“Uh, strange things like what? Bigfoot?” Adam quips._ _

__“Strange as in, their existence is not typically accounted for by humans. Ghosts, monsters, abominations. Things of unnatural origin. It is all-too-easy to believe in the presence of angels, for example; positive faith is incredibly powerful. But do you believe in demons, Adam?”_ _

__They are moving towards the register now, and Adam is starving, otherwise he might be tempted to put everything back that he had just grabbed and run out of the gas station screaming. But Castiel is driving him and the guy may be delusional, but he has not done anything to hurt Adam. Plus, despite the herking and jerking, he isn’t the WORST driver in the world. And he had gotten Adam out of hot water with the police, so… “Do I believe in demons?” he asks faintly as he waits in line to pay for his food behind a few other shoppers. What can he say? It is not that he does not think Castiel is a real angel; he had been healed of a head wound with one touch, and as a medical student Adam knows that is not possible. But he hadn’t really believed in angels before that. It was nice to think about them watching over him or whatever when he was a kid, but he is science-minded and has gone through enough in his life to see rationally the results of actions and reactions rather than basing occurrences on ethereal powers or magic. He’d been joking about Bigfoot and here this guy is, seriously talking about ghosts and monsters and asking Adam if he thinks that demons exist. “I don't know… if I saw one,” the young man says finally, sucking in an unsteady breath as he trails off. “…I think...”_ _

__The elevation of Adam's heart rate and rapidity of his breathing causes the angel to reply “There is no need for panic or alarm.” Castiel’s voice is firm and strident; though he does not intend for it to carry, several people in line actually raise their hands and take looks at the creepy guy in the tan trench coat talking about demons. Oh no._ _

__“Is this a holdup?” One asks._ _

__“Ah no, I can’t be gettin’ involved in that sorta stuff again!”_ _

__“Is he crazy? Should we call someone?”_ _

__“Are we in danger? Does he have a gun??”_ _

__“No, I do not have a gun,” Castiel responds evenly, attempting to placate the humans. “I am an angel of the Lord and do not require human weapons.”_ _

__"Oh, my God. Castiel, would you, uh, c’mere?” Adam lowers his voice and crooks his finger at the angel. Castiel carefully and solemnly leans closer, lowering his face and listening closely. “Don’t just—tell people that you’re an angel, okay? And…saying things like ‘don’t panic’ after you were just talking about monsters and demons and shit—it kind of freaks people out.”_ _

__Castiel cocks his head. “But that is reassurance, that people fight those monsters and demons. And that I assured there is no need to panic. It should have the opposite effect.”_ _

__“Yeah, well, it doesn’t,” Adam snapped. He raises his voice to speak to the concerned and curious shoppers. “Sorry. My friend’s a little sleep-deprived. Med school tests are a bitch. Okay, uh, we’re getting these,” he dumps the pile of food bags and drinks onto the counter in front of the wide-eyed cashier. “Castiel?”_ _

__The other looks around and plops his ‘Busty Asian Beauties’ magazine on the pile. The cashier’s expression clears and he grins as he looks over their purchases and rings them up. “College is a killer, an’ ya gotta relax somehow. Right on.”_ _

__“…Thanks,” Adam says. He takes the bag the cashier offers, hands him a 20 and says “Keep the change.” He quickly exits the place with one hand tightly gripping Castiel’s sleeve. “C’mon, buddy, we’ve got to get back,” he says for the others’ benefit. As soon as the doors close behind them and they get across the parking lot to the car, Adam rips his hand away from the angel’s arm and snaps “I can’t believe you made me DO that!”_ _

__Castiel is confused. “Do what?”_ _

__“LIE to all those people in there! I don’t lie! And do angels have any common sense, by the way? Or tact? Because the best way to avoid lying is just…don’t draw attention to yourself like that. You’re an angel. That’s great. Just—keep quiet about it, okay? You can’t go around saying shit that can be taken badly. Like practically everything you said in there.” Castiel unlocks the car and Adam throws himself inside after he is through speaking. He shoves the bag of foodstuffs and drinks and porn onto the floor and slams the door after him. Subdued, the angel climbs into the driver's seat and starts the car up. The aborted putt-putt-putt of the Lincoln's engine drowns out everything except Adam's wildly whirling thoughts. Which pisses him off, and he can tell that Castiel is STILL waiting for an answer to his demon question. Fine. "You know what? Sure, Castiel. Demons are real if angels are." He rolls his shoulders and lets out a puff of breath, staring out his window. His mom is -was- super science-minded too, but she had believed in stuff like that._ _

“…There’s gotta be a balance,” Adam continues. “That’s what…my mom always told me. When the first life on Earth showed up and started growing, it also had to decay. Entropy is countered by growth, so…angels are matched by demons. There’s gotta be both.” He shrugs. “Not that I’ve ever seen one, but if I do…I guess it’d make sense, now that I’ve met you.” Adam gives a slight nod of finality and opens his first bag of chips.

Castiel swallows. He must at least attempt to explain to Adam about Dean being a demon, now that the other has said these things. “Adam,” he begins. “You have seen one already. The being that killed your mother—the friend I am so desperately trying to save—he - he is a demon.” 

The angel risks taking his eyes off of the road to glance sideways at his companion. Adam continues to stare out of his window. He does not look at Castiel and there is no response from him but silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On Jody and Bobby: I wrote this with the plotline of "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" fresh in my mind, and that is why Bobby believes Jody understands his predicament better than anyone. He had to shoot his wife, and she had to hear someone else shoot her son. 
> 
> On Sam: poor guy can't catch a break. The Devil is dead at this point, but of course the Boy King is unaware of that fact, so he is seeing Lucifer....
> 
> On Dean (and demons in general): I figured that since some demons remember what it is like to be human, as Ruby said in Season 3, they would have dreams if they allowed themselves to sleep. And the reason that we do not see or think about demons sleeping is because when they do sleep, their dreams are warped visions of how they feel about their human lives. Poor Dean, even as a demon he cannot escape his self-loathing.
> 
> On Adam: the kid just wants to be as truthful as he can while flying under the radar. He's unobtrusive, a wallflower. Has been like that by necessity throughout his life - being a latchkey kid and all, and he sees that necessity anew when in the presence of a rather tactless angel. (Also, yes, the comment about a tinder profile is anachronistic, but I thought it fit well in the conversation.) And poor Cas. He's trying.


	9. Chapter Nine.

THEN

It’s the End of the World (As They Know It)

“That’s what you don’t understand, _Satan _—even when I lose, I win.”__

____

____

“I’m John Winchester’s son. . . . And you disgraced him and my mom.”

“You're gonna accept my help so your boys don't start ANOTHER apocalypse.”

“You don’t NEED to find me, Sam-I-Am. I’m _right here _. Inside your head.”__

__“Lucifer—he was here. He talked to me, Dean.”_ _

“You’re the monster here, Dean. You're the freak.”

____“The being that killed your mother— . . . he is a demon.”_ _ _ _

____NOW_ _ _ _

**On the road. Crossing through Iowa.**

Castiel knows that he needs to explain some things so that Adam can understand enough about what he is dealing with. Both in order for the human to be informed and to survive. “A demon is an abomination,” he explains to his companion. “In some cases, a soul has been corrupted by evils done or by humans being willing to give themselves over to the Devil. They are driven by ills in the world, as well as ills within themselves…” The angel pauses, stops. He could so easily think of the demons as abhorrent abominations until his two closest friends came under the thrall of such power. Though it was not done for nefarious purposes, but safety—Sam is not even ‘demonic’ as such—he only utilizes his blood-borne powers. It is Dean who now has no soul. It was his particular torturous techniques that had been most in evidence on the Hurrah’s surveillance cameras; and his imprint in the sulphurous residue in Adam’s house. Cas knows this, and yet he must also keep Adam safe, and therefore has to explain how to destroy his closest friend. It is difficult for the angel to explain, having learned what the Winchesters do in bits and pieces. Despite knowing they are hunters, he does not understand the logistics of day-to-day life hunting. “There are ways to recognize demons and arrest their movements—speaking the word ‘Christus’ is one; creating a devil’s trap with a pentagram, a five-pointed star surrounded by a circle, from something such as paint or blood is another. Holy water is also effective. It burns the skin of any unclean spirit and causes immense pain.”

Adam slowly turns his head to stare at the angel. “You realize how...absolutely frickin insane you sound right now?”

“Yes.” The angel says. “I realize that this may be—difficult—for you to believe.”

Adam crumples his now-empty chip bag and folds his arms across his chest, eyebrows rising and falling. “…Yeah. It is, a bit.” He rubs his face with one hand and adds quietly “…I do believe you, though.”

“Well that is advantageous. I had expected this information to be nigh impossible for you to comprehend, but you are handling this—admirably.” He stumbles a little over these words, not knowing how atypical Adam’s response is from personal experience, only from snippets Dean had told him about peoples’ reactions when the Winchesters were forced to speak the truth of their occupation whilst on a job. Adam believes the angel because, well, why not? Castiel obviously thinks this stuff works. So why not believe in his thoughts about it? It’s not like Adam is actually going to get into a situation where he will need to use any of this information. 

Putting salt lines across thresholds of houses and using pentagrams to exorcise demons seems like the mind playing tricks on a person’s consciousness—psychological phenomena resulting from trauma, a synapse misfire, or even a chemical imbalance. Illicit substances and the body’s reaction to them could very well be perceived as demonic (or angelic, for that matter). But none of these explanations explain the literal shrinkage of swelling on Adam’s skull or the loss of abrasions on his skin when this being touched him. It makes no medical sense; no scientific sense. And he may be science-minded but in that theory of balance that his mom believed, his theory, or more like his unrealized hope from childhood—is that angels are good strong beings that guard and guide humans. The kick in the ass is that THIS angel did too little and arrived too late. He had not been able to do good—and his ‘friend’ was the demon who killed Adam’s mom. God, he hates thinking that. Adam shakes his head and presses both fists against the sides of his face for a brief moment. Swinging his arms down and grinding his knuckles into the cloth of the seat, Adam lets out a slow hissing breath of air and cuts his eyes sideways to look out of their corners at Castiel. He mumbles wearily “Why are you saying all this stuff to me?”

A stiff solemnity descends over Castiel, even more stiffness than was already there. He suddenly has the bearing of a soldier—shoulders straight, eyes up—as he answers “I tell you these things for your own safety, Adam. Creatures of darkness walk the Earth, and you will have to fight them.”

Adam Milligan stares at Castiel in horror, but the angel knows that he cannot hide the truth anymore. If Adam is determined to face the person that killed his mother, he needs to be prepared. Not only to fight a demon with the strength and skills that a hunter has, but he needs to know exactly who this demon is to him.

"Adam," the angel adds carefully, "Are you acquainted with your father at all?" 

Adam blinks rapidly. There's a mood-changer. He has not seen his dad in years; not since he had graduated from high school. His father had wanted to know what Adam was planning for his future...college? grad school? But why did that matter to him, a man who'd slept with Adam's mom and disappeared. "Why does THAT matter right now?" He demands of the angel. "I have a father, sure, in name. But it's my mom who raised me. Alone. She worked the graveyard shift at the hospital, I came home, I cooked my own dinners and I put myself to sleep. But she loved me, and we were _happy _, before..." before tonight. Adam sniffs and rubs his nose fiercely. "Why're you asking about him?"__

__Without making an answer, Castiel continues his line of questioning. "Do you know his name?"_ _

__"Uh, yeah. John Winchester. He visited a couple times starting when I was 14. Broad guy, dark beard...drove this sweet 1967 Chevy Impala." He gives Cas a sardonic look. "Do you wanna know his Social Security Number too?"_ _

__"Do you have _access _to that information?" Castiel asks.___ _

____Adam rolls his eyes. "No, dude, I was joking. What, are you askin' 'cause you wanna dump me at his place? Tired of me tagging along? That's fine, man, but I'm an adult. I can take care of myself."_ _ _ _

____"I am fully aware of your age," the angel says. "And I am not going to 'dump' you anywhere. I cannot take you to your father's, because he has been dead these past four years. But he has two elder sons, Sam and Dean." The angel's voice catches slightly on their names, but his passenger doesn't notice._ _ _ _

____"I have...are you saying I have _BROTHERS??? _" Adam whispers and then continues rapid-fire "How do you know? Where are they? Do angels do paternity tests or something?"___ _ _ _

______"...I know this because I know the two of them personally. And angels are aware of how humans are interrelated, yes. But that is not the reason I told you." Castiel squares his shoulders and prepares himself to speak the rest. "The eldest, Dean. He is..." What can he say about Dean? "He is flawed, but I believe -as do the other angels- he is a righteous man. He and Sam have both done wrong, but they look out for one another. And the wrongs they do are usually for the right reasons. But now—" It hurts to say this, but Adam deserves to know. The angel slows the car and turns in his seat to face his passenger. "Evil days have come. The Apocalypse is nearing, and to circumvent it, Dean has become a demon. Adam, he is...he is the demon who killed your mother."_ _ _ _ _ _

______Adam's eyes bulge. Then he hauls off and shoves Castiel in the chest as hard as he can with the heels of both hands._ _ _ _ _ _

______***_ _ _ _ _ _

______The angel files this reaction away. Two Winchester sons have hit him now - the eldest and the youngest. This time the aftermath is different, however. Dean had turned away in pain yet had been unable to physically depart. But Adam is jerking on the handle of the car door with his right hand as he unbuckles the seatbelt with his left. "Let—me—out," he growls, beating both fists against the door. He whips his head around, a tuft of light hair escaping from under his beanie. His eyes are wild and wet and angry. " _NOW _, Castiel!"________

_____ _

_____ _

The angel studies the human and then looks downward, hand stretching hesitantly over the door handle on the drivers’ side and flipping the ‘unlock’ button. He brings the car completely to a stop on the side of the road. The Lincoln’s chassis settles and its axles creak as if it too feels the tension exiting as Adam does.

The young man shoves his now-unlocked door wide and hurls himself out. He would likely have face-planted into the ground if he had not remembered to unbuckle his seatbelt. As it is, he slams his seatbelt back into its holster with savage force and yanks himself through the open car door to land on hands and knees on the road’s shoulder. Scrambling to his feet, Adam clenches and unclenches his hands, shaking out his wrists. The angel’s chest had been unyielding as a giant rock. He quickly moves away from the road as well as the vehicle, sides heaving as he struggles to wrap his head around any of this information. It had been weird enough hearing a guy speak matter-of-factly about exorcising demons and battling against creatures of darkness, but then to say he was RELATED to one of them—one, two, whatever—is utterly profoundly ridiculous. Not to mention totally fucking terrifying. As well as absurd. If anybody else finds out about an angel of the Lord coming to tell him that he is the brother of demons…. Adam can already see it—the armored van arriving to drag him off somewhere. Not in chains or a straitjacket, just ‘for his own good’ to ‘perform some tests’. 

Adam begins to laugh weakly. He cannot help it; this is all just so frickin’ insane. John Winchester may have been his father, but Adam never had a dad. It was him and his mom. That was it. That had always been it—she worked the graveyard shift and he came home, cooked his own dinners, and put himself to bed. For Castiel to ask about his father…AND say that he has brothers after the only person in his life he loved is gone—that is too much to deal with; too many emotions, too many possibilities to take. Can he go to his mother’s murderer with the same purpose in mind still? His weak chuckles peter out and he breathes hard. That is all he can do for the present—just keep on breathing.

Castiel has followed his passenger out of the car and off the road, trench coat billowing behind, blue eyes wide and concerned. Screw that. Adam is done with concerned and worried and conciliatory Cas. He wishes the angel would get frustrated or angry—hell, maybe that would be enough to make him leave, and Adam could…. “You do not mean that,” the other says suddenly. Adam turns his head, slightly startled by the intensity of Castiel’s tone of voice. “You cannot wish me to leave you all alone here. The world is dangerous, Adam.”

Now THIS just takes the cake! “Uh, as far as I’m concerned, the most dangerous thing right now is a guy reading my mind, and anOTHER guy torturing and stabbing my mother. And both of those things have happened already, so…” Adam shrugs, bouncing on his feet a little and not looking at Castiel. “Why don’t you just…just leave me alone?”

“I don’t understand. You told me to take you to the—”

“Bastard that killed my mother, yeah, yeah, I know.” Adam groans. “But this is way more complicated. If he is my brother—if you’re right—then I’m screwed.” It's so screwed up, this entire situation. “Do you know how screwed up this is, Castiel? What you’re saying?” The young man shakes his head in helplessness, fury, resignation. “How can you even—you’re an _angel _. I mean—how could you not...?” How is this being so utterly oblivious? Had he truly not expected Adam to react the way he had, or at the very least in a similar manner, after the demon topic had been broached (which did not actually explain anything to Adam at all, thank you very much)? But telling him that he has a brother—two brothers—and one of them is a demon murderer…in Adam’s opinion, yeah, a freak-out should be expected! In fact, he feels like he has been coping pretty well thus far, considering. (Minus the panic attack back home.) But this is just....__

____

____

"Too much." Castiel speaks soberly, eyes crinkling at the corners as he registers Adam's turmoil. "I understand." He had felt a surge of feeling upon telling Dean _"I rebelled for this??? So that you could surrender to them?! I gave EVERYTHING for you! And this is what you give to me!" _And then Dean had gone and done an even STUPIDER thing. He had chosen family, chosen Sam - but as a demon, with neither soul nor conscience. He is no longer human, and Adam needs to hear that in order to be aware of what he is walking into. But Castiel regrets that he spoke so bluntly. He does not know how to help this young man or to put him at ease, if that is even possible.__

Adam stands miserably with shoulders hunched and hands in pockets, but he isn't running away anymore. There is no point in going farther - they are on a straight-shot one-track road through cornfields and grass. He wants to demand if the angel actually understands but cannot make himself vocalize those words. They would likely cause some sort of psycho-babble philosophical session to begin, and he is too damn tired for that. Meanwhile Castiel hesitantly reaches out and places a hand on Adam’s shoulder. The young man jerks himself away, eyes wide and accusing as they latch onto the angel’s. His facial expression telegraphs ‘what the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ and the angel quickly removes his hand. His attempt to provide physical comfort did not work. Why hadn’t it worked? That sort of thing helped Dean, the angel thinks plaintively. What is he doing wrong with Adam? _Not every person responds the same way to physical affection. Try talking to him, Castiel; _Jimmy Novak’s gentle voice touches the angel’s consciousness with advice and a suggestion. Castiel takes a breath and his shoulders drop a little. Talk to him. What should he say? An apology for the overwhelming information he had imparted seems like a viable place to start. “I am sorry, Adam. I know that the words I said were none that you wanted to hear. I have—imparted an overwhelming amount of information to you.”__

____

____

“Ya think?” Adam snorts, acerbic.

The other’s shoulders actually droop as he winces. “I sincerely apologize,” the angel reiterates, contrition written in every line and crease of his face. Adam does not want to say everything is okay, because it is nowhere close to okay, but…he knows this angel cares. He cannot believe that he is thinking this, based on the shit Castiel said, but he did not HAVE to agree to take Adam with him, to tell the truth about his friend being Adam's demon brother, or even heal Adam's wounds in the first place. But, dammit, he had done all this - despite his complete lack of tact and incredibly awkward speech patterns, this being is trying to help. Castiel stands there beside the road in his tan coat and cockeyed tie looking all dejected.

Adam wants to turn and walk away so badly; just cross the field of high grass before him and not give a shit about leaving the other behind. But he cannot bring himself to do it. Where would he go, first off? Back to school? Yeah, right. That's a laugh. He is going to be twenty years in debt already for the time in medical school he already started, but now that there is no more income.... He cuts himself off at the pass and spins around, moving back towards the road. Castiel snaps his head up, blue eyes so bright and hopeful for a second as Adam pushes past him to return to the gravel one-track in the middle of nowhere. “Still hafta find this guy,” he says over his shoulder to Castiel. “…I’ve just got to ask him TWO questions now.”

The angel nods briskly despite the fact that the human cannot see him and then strides quickly after his charge. They reach the car at the same moment and the angel unlocks it. He should probably let it go, but “Might I be able to answer either of your questions, Adam?”

“Highly doubt it,” Adam opens the passenger door with a jerk. “Besides, I think…you’ve done enough explaining for now.” He stares at the slim expanse of road before them, tapping his right thumb four times against the top of the car door. “I just wanna know why he killed my mom, and if he knew we were family—” The young man swallows hard and looks at Castiel directly. “If that…if that’s why he spared me.” Adam shakes his head and swings himself into the passenger seat. Under his breath, he mutters “Why didn’t he just…kill me too?” 

The angel opens his own door and enters the car. He starts the engine and fastens his seatbelt but despite himself and his wish to elucidate Dean’s reasoning on his friend’s behalf, Castiel can make no satisfactory answer and thus prudently elects to give no answer at all.

***

**Metro Precinct, Fourth Division Station. Louisville, Kentucky.**

After that phone call from Minnesota, Lucy Martinez cannot get Agent Moscone and his predicament out of her head.

She had put out a BOLO on the vehicle Eddie told her his partner would most likely be driving when the two had gotten back to the station after visiting the crime scene. She wished she could have done more then, but he had looked at her with those sensitive sorrowful blue eyes and rumbled his sincere thanks. He called her on his first day back on the road to explain that her assistance had worked, and he and Adam were freed from custody as a result of it. After thanking her again for her help, the FBI agent asked if she could check the BOLO’s progress.

Thankfully (and surprisingly) she got a hit only days after he departed. Luckily the number of 1967 Chevrolet Impalas registered to law enforcement officers is minimal in her experience, so narrowing the field to that particular make and model effectively streamlined her search. 

***

**Back on the road.**

Seeing as he had branded both Winchesters’ ribs with Enochian, they are shielded from his angelic sight – even MORE so since his Grace continues fading after his Fall – Castiel has to rely upon the whimsies of human technological prowess. He desperately hopes that will be enough.

_I’d throw away my faith, babe, just to keep you safe—Don’t’cha know you’re everything I had?_

These are the strains of the first song to come on the Lincoln’s radio after the silence becomes intolerable to Castiel. Adam fiddles with the knob, but the only other stations available in flat-country Iowa are fifties disco, country, and static. So they stick with this station.

_Before you start a war, you better know what you’re fighting for…._

What IS he fighting for now? Sam and Dean are nowhere close to safety, despite being off the Apocalyptic chessboard for the moment. How long that moment will last, the angel has absolutely no idea—particularly if he and Adam catch up to them soon and Michael is still on the warpath…

_I’m an angel with a shotgun, fighting til the war’s won,  
I don’t care if Heaven won’t take me back—_

“…Is that true?” his passenger asks.

Castiel blinks and glances over at Adam. “Pardon?”

Adam nods in the direction of the radio. “That. If you got stuck down here, would…would you care if you ever went back up? To Heaven?”

Castiel actively ponders the question with grave sincerity, not noting his companion’s eyebrow rising or the wry twist to Adam’s mouth. “I do not know if I will ever own a shotgun, but I have already been cast out of Heaven, Adam.” His thin lips press together in shame and regret. So much has happened in the past year and a half. Yes, he had disobeyed his orders on Earth, but it was as a result of knowledge that some things were indeed worth fighting for no matter the cost. “And no, I do not,” the angel replies simply. “I have friends here, and a new mandate that I have created for myself. I follow my own orders now. I must care for them and keep them safe.”

"Who? Your friends?” One of whom is a freaking murderer? So noble, wow. Adam cannot help the vitriol that pours through him, making his ears ring so loudly that he nearly misses Castiel's reply.

“Yes, my friends, but humanity as well. I must continue the work that would be stopped—dead, I believe is the correct term—by the Apocalypse." Adam lets out an amused breath as the other continues. "I must follow my Father’s command to love humans above all things, because...I have learned through my own experience that He was right. Faith, hope, love; culture, beauty, art...humanity may be full of flaws, but it has so many virtues." He recalls more of Dean’s words, the ones that his friend had desperately shouted in response to his own misguided mandate:

- _Try to understand; this is long foretold, this is your—_

__

__

- _Destiny? Don’t give me that ‘holy’ crap. Destiny, God’s plan… It’s all a bunch of lies, you poor, stupid son of a bitch! It’s just a way for your bosses to keep me – and keep you – in line! You know what’s real? People, families—that’s real. And you’re gonna watch them all burn?!_

__

__

- _What is so worth saving?! I see nothing but pain here! I see inside you, I see your guilt, your anger, confusion. In Paradise, all is forgiven. You’ll be at peace. Even with Sam._

Ducking his head to catch the angel’s eyes, his staunch, stubborn friend had added: _You can take your peace – and shove it up your lily-white ass. ‘Cause I’ll take the pain and the guilt. I’ll even take Sam as is. It’s a lot better than being some Stepford bitch in Paradise. This is simple, Cas! No more crap about being a good soldier; there is a right and there is a wrong here, and you know it. Look at me! You know it! And you were gonna help me once, weren’t you? You were gonna warn me about all this, before they dragged you back to Bible Camp. Well, help me now. Please._

__

- _…What would you have me do?_

__

- _Get me to Sam. We can stop this before it’s too late!_

- _I do that, we will all be hunted—we’ll all be killed!_

__

__

- _If there's anything worth dying for, this is it._

That is why he is doing this, Castiel realizes. Why he will not stop searching for a way to help his friends - because he believes in their inherent goodness, and this situation is a way for Dean to take Sam as is. Yet he will remind them of their humanity, and hopes that Adam will as well. And so he says "I must remind Sam and Dean - my friends, your brothers - that they must recall their humanity, for they are good."

Adam raises his eyebrows and expels air through his nose. They are good. Yeah, sure. "Okay.... Well, good luck with that."

After another, much shorter stretch of silence, the young man enquires, seeming almost wistful, “What’s it like? Heaven?” Just so he knows what happened to his mom, and what could be in store for him….

Again, the angel is unsure how to reply. “It is different for humans than it is for angels,” he says eventually. “There are…when a human dies, their soul exists in a place of all of their greatest memories, intermixed with the presences of their loved ones.”

Adam ponders this. “So…what about parents? Do they get to be in the same place as their kids?”

Forehead wrinkling, Castiel contemplates this and does his best to explain. “Yes and no,” he says finally. “Soulmates are always together in Paradise, and so…barring circumstances that I am unaware of, those who are bonded as a pair in romantic love will remain in a section together, but otherwise every person is alone, in their own personal Heaven.”

“What if a parent didn’t have a ‘pair bond of romantic love’ or whatever? If they had no one else BUT their kid, are you gonna tell me that’s not a type of soulmate?” Adam says heatedly. “‘Cause love shouldn’t have to be romantic for you to share a Heaven. It’s when you’d do anything for somebody and can’t be without them.” He blinks back tears and looks away before adding quietly “so if that romance crap is the reason I won’t see my mom again, then…then no offense, but screw that version of Paradise.”

Castiel cocks his head in confusion at the vehemence of Adam’s reply. “But memories of good times past…are they not fulfilling?” he asks.

Oh, for the love of— “It's not about - I don’t CARE about the memories, you son of a bitch!” Adam spits. “I just…I just want my mom….” His voice hitches and he continues, far quieter, “And what good are memories if I never actually get to see her again?” The young man wipes his face on his sleeve and stares out of the passenger window as the song on the radio continues:

_If love is what you need, a soldier I will be…._

Castiel feels so much that he has never before felt, and he cannot talk of these feelings (except perhaps to Anna, but she has disappeared, for which he cannot judge her harshly after all he and the other angels had done). Now Adam is the closest person to him physically, but he is unsure how to interact with this young man, who is so stridently angry about the state of his life and the logistics of Heaven – for which the angel cannot blame him. Cas is inclined to agree with Adam about love and its distribution in Heaven, despite his limited experience with feeling. He had simply never considered that point of view before.

The fact that this young human chooses to voice his concerns and questions; that he remains with Castiel even after hearing of his brothers, makes the angel feel a warm sort of pressure that catches in his throat and fills his chest cavity. He wonders briefly if his vessel is getting sick or if this feeling is another consequence of his Fall, but a word enters his thoughts unbidden from the consciousness of Jimmy: GRATITUDE. That is the source of the sensation in Castiel’s body. He is grateful for the presence of the human riding shotgun, and it is a strange thing, for the angel to feel grateful for the presence of a person who hates his closest friend. Yet Adam’s hatred for Dean is not only understandable but completely justified and in no way negates the angel’s appreciation for him. Castiel simply does not know how – or if it is prudent – to vocalize any of these emotions. He simply considers himself fortunate that Adam is still here and feels comfortable enough to speak in such a truthful manner. In some ways, the manner that Adam speaks his truth is reminiscent of Dean’s vehemence and Sam's willingness to emote, which the angel finds comforting. He may not have a grasp on the entire spectrum of human emotion, but comfort is one feeling the angel has few issues recognizing. And so he does his best to give a proper answer: “I understand your frustration and appreciate your willingness to share it openly,” he says. “I know you do not appreciate lies.”

Adam snorts.

***

Aches and pains are encroaching on the consciousness of Castiel as he drives, and Jimmy’s voice tells him that he is suffering from muscle and joint pain as well as residual nerve damage resulting from the many wounds he sustained on Earth in the year before his Fall. He even begins to experience spasms in his neck and back from so much time sitting rigidly driving a car, though the angel has no idea what these feelings are.

Adam notices Castiel grow twitchy – well, twitchier – the longer he drives. At first it is nothing that the young man pays particular attention to; the angel is a jerky driver anyway. It is lucky for the angel that he does not suffer from motion sickness or have a weak stomach. But being in pre-med en-route to medical school had taught Adam a few things, believe it or not; and one of them was that minor discomforts can flare into major issues if not treated promptly and properly. So as soon as he realizes the angel is suffering from some pain, the young man says “Hey,” quietly; still feeling awkward about his outburst of earlier. Calling Castiel a son of a bitch had not been his finest moment, especially since none of this was the angel’s fault. Plus Adam’s instincts as a burgeoning health-care professional are kicking in now. “Looks like you’re having some twinges there. Are you in a lot of pain?” 

Castiel grimaces and widens his eyes as he presses one hand against his side for an instant. “…Yes. I believe so. What is this feeling? It’s incredibly unpleasant.” 

Adam raises his eyebrows. “Can’t do a full medical exam here, but…if you need me to drive, I can. For a while. You just gotta tell me where we need to go.”

Wincing with only one hand on the wheel, the angel says “Well, that—that I do not know.”

Wait. “ _What??_ What do you MEAN you don’t kn—why are we driving all over the friggin country then, Castiel?”

“Please, Adam—would you mind lowering your voice? I do not personally know where we are going at the present, but the detective I spoke to when still in your house—”

“—the lady who got us both off the hook for murder. Yeah, I remember.” How could he forget? Adam obligingly lowers his voice as the angel pulls the car over. “What about her?”

“She has put out a . . . BOGO on the car they are most likely driving. It is a rather conspicuous vehicle; a—”

“1967 Chevrolet Impala,” Adam rattles off. And it’s BOLO, he wanted to add, but decides to let that lie.

Castiel whips his head to stare at the passenger and gasps in pain. “How do you -ow- know that?”

“John drove it, the four or so times he visited. Taught me to drive a little when I was fourteen.” Adam’s stomach is sinking. It’s real. These guys ARE actually my family. It wasn’t that he thought Castiel would lie, but the dude being an angel, he half-expected to get a ‘we are all related for we are all God’s children’ reply; but information continues ringing true… he’s got to stop thinking about this or he is going to go nuts. He can feel it. So the young man shakes his head and gets out of the car. “Come on,” he says after Castiel does not budge. “We can at least get some of the kinks out after being—wait. You’re having muscle spasms, aren’t you? Here,” He moves forward to clinically assess the situation. “Turn your head to the left. Please.” The angel obeys, squinting—and wincing—all the while. “Okay, yup.” It is as he had figured. “Now to the right.” As the angel obliges, the young man adds “Can I—may I touch your neck for a second?” Rule number one when working with any patient: always ask for permission the first time you need to touch them. When the angel nods, Adam reaches up purposefully and places his fingers firmly against the sides of the angel’s neck and jaw. “Your muscles are in serious knots,” he reports.

Castiel stands stock-still, concern writ large on his solemn features. His eyes are wide. “Can these—muscle spasms be treated, or will they cause permanent damage? Will my—will I be all right?”

Adam smiles for the first time. It transforms his face, the expression crinkling the outside edges of his eyes and suffusing his features with even more youth and a carefree expression that is beautiful to behold. “Yeah, I think you’ll live,” the young man reports. “Ya just need to relax awhile. Release the tension. Um,” Adam releases the angel as he looks into the back of the car, bending to peer into its rear window. “Yeah, that looks pretty good,” he adds.

“What looks pretty good?” Castiel remains confused, but is nevertheless relieved that his vessel will be all right.

The young man straightens up again and studies him. “You need to lie down to loosen up your tight muscles, and the backseat is big enough."

“…But I do not sleep,” protests the angel.

Adam rolls his eyes. “You don’t have to sleep, just lay down for a couple of hours, okay? I can drive us to…wherever.” He stands impatiently as the angel ponders this proposition for-frickin-ever before he finally hands over the keys.

“All right. Thank you.” The angel opens the back door on the driver’s side and climbs in behind the driver’s seat.

Adam nods as he opens the front door and climbs into the seat itself, pulling the lever to move the chair forward as he adjusts the mirrors. Glances back at Cas. “You good?” he asks as the angel gingerly stretches his legs across the seats.

“Yes, I am, though this is a strange position for me to be in.” He lets out a slight sigh. “And you, Adam?” he inquires.

“I will be once we get to where we’re goin’,” the new driver says matter-of-factly as he puts his seatbelt on. Starting the Lincoln and pulling back onto the road once more, he adds “So…where _are_ we going, generally? Do you know?”

“Keep straight on this road for twenty-five miles,” is the angel’s answer. “I will check if there have been any new developments in the case discovered by Detective Martinez. I mean, Lucy.”

The human nods grimly and drives on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Discerning readers may notice that, according to Castiel, the word used to recognize a demon is spelled as 'Christus' rather than 'Christo'. That is because the declension needed to actually make that word of a Latin derivation is 'us'. When spoken as 'Christo', the word is actually Greek. And since the name of Christ was never identified using the Greek language in the show, I wanted to make certain the proper Latinized spelling was used here.
> 
> For the segment in which Castiel talks to Adam about Heaven, I wanted to address something that I personally felt was an issue in the show - the idea of soulmates. I do not feel that being someone's soulmate necessarily constitutes romantic love. However I also do not have a definitive grasp of what a soulmate truly is, or what Heaven is/should be, and so I left that conversation open because I don't think Castiel would have a reply. Heaven is up to interpretation and what sort of faith each individual has. Everyone believes what they choose to believe, and I think Cas would be fine with that, even if he had not considered such a perspective before.
> 
> I also love Dean's conversation (well, argument) with Cas in the finale of Season 4, "Lucifer Rising". Thus my reason for including quotes from it in this chapter. Those words exemplify who Dean is as a person so well, and the fact that he is so impassioned in his argument proves how much he cares about Castiel. In my opinion the evolution of their friendship from "You think I came because YOU called?" to "What would you have me do?" is, to put it simply, wonderful.


	10. Chapter Ten.

**Sioux Falls.**

It's damned good to be on a mission again. Bobby had missed it. Even though he is still sure he cannot do anything of use…but Jody Mills continues to nip that thought process in the bud whenever she can. “Oh, bull—you still have your mind, don’t you? Means you’re not useless, Bobby.”

Glaring up at the sheriff from under his bushy brows, Bobby growls “Whether I still got my mind’s debatable—probably drank it away years ago.” He expects her to get on his case for throwing himself a pity-party, but Jody just slaps his shoulder bracingly.

“I wouldn’t let that happen. Why d’you think everyone in this town knows who you are?”

“Know that I’m the town drunk, ya mean? ‘Cause you’re a heartless woman, that’s why. Constantly threatenin’ me with jail time for the past nine years...”

Her hand goes to rest on one hip and she nods, eyes sparkling with what looks like satisfaction. “Fair point. But you haven’t actually BEEN to jail because everyone in Sioux Falls is looking out for you, Bobby Singer.”

He scoffs. “Yeah, right. Why would any of ‘em care? I’ve never spoken to most'a the people in this town.”

“Maybe not, but you’ve never been rude.” When he shoots her a disbelieving look, she snaps back, “Well all right, you’re a bit on the crotchety side, but everyone knows how much you care for those boys of yours.”

Bobby lets out a snort. “You just met ‘em a couple months ago, Jody. How’d you see somethin’ from me in that?” And they aren’t mine, not really. If they WERE, the pair’a idjits wouldn’t’ve gotten in this mess without at least warnin’ me about it first…

“I’ve lived here a long time, Bobby—and I’m not just talking from my duties as sheriff, either. Word gets around.” She smiles. "The old sheriff told me how you threatened their daddy with a shotgun."

“It was loaded with buckshot,” Bobby rolls his eyes. “Wouldn’t have actually _hurt_ the bastard; I just wanted to make sure he got my point.”

“And what point was that?” The sheriff asks softly, tapping the side of her thumb against the mug of coffee she is holding. Bobby had made some after they returned from the grocery store and got down to brass tacks, and has continued to do so every night since.

After her shift ends and she locks up the police station in the evenings, sometimes early the next morning (the latest -or earliest- she'd come had been five a.m. and at that point SHE brews the coffee), the sheriff arrives at the Singer house to find its owner poring feverishly over books, searching for various and sundry pieces of information about reversing demon creation. Not to mention another way to cure a demon blood addiction; after all, forced detoxing only works when the addict can not only be found, but physically supplied with the appropriate curative measures.

Bobby now sighs; he doesn’t want to do this—airing someone else’s dirty laundry just isn’t his style. But hell, this is his washin’ as well, and Jody deserves to know. Besides she could put the hurt on him if he didn’t tell her. He tries to weasel out of speaking up anyway: “Hell, this isn’t my place to say, Jody—”

“Too bad, Bobby,” she snaps. “You brought it up. You ALSO recklessly discharged a firearm multiple times, putting your neighbors’ lives in danger. I still have the report on file.”

“ _What_ neighbors???” Bobby splutters, indignant. Why would she want to pull that card on him now? Because she's the sheriff and she can. He answers his own question.

His mulish silence after that query causes the sheriff to pick up her walkie-talkie suggestively. “I can still send it in….”

 _Balls!_ “All right, all right. Gimme a second, geez.” The man grunts and yanks off his hat, pushing back his hair with one irritable swoop. Jody stands patiently. Jamming the hat back on his head, he says to her “Their daddy was on a vendetta. Had been for years, chasin' the damned thing that killed his wife, but doin’ that was really screwing up his boys. Not just their present but their future. Sam was always incredibly bright, a big reader. And Dean—hell, he never talked back, never complained. But he wasn’t born to this life; he was forced into it. That kid had no idea how to just be a KID. So I played catch with him, I let him watch movies at my place and pig out on candy an’ popcorn with Sam…” He smiles slightly, remembering them as adults bickering over who was more of a badass in _Kill Bill_ —Uma Thurman or Lucy Liu. “They could both be _happy_. But soon as their father came back, they lost that. He’d show up barkin’ orders, not even asking how they’d been doing, no ‘hi’ or nothin’, and both’a those boys had no more life in their eyes when they said goodbye to me. And it pissed me off. Going single-mindedly after the thing that had killed his wife made John Winchester forget the parts’a her that lived on in their children. They deserved for—for their father to GIVE a rat’s ass about what they wanted!” He shakes his head and for the first time during this conversation looks directly into his friend’s eyes. “I tried to save them from this, Jody. I wanted…” He trails off for a moment and then adds gruffly, desperately: “I STILL want those idjits to turn out okay.”

There is silence, after which the sheriff leans forward and says, her voice soft and serious and gentle, “And that’s why we love you, Bobby. You’re a man who cares.” She nods at him and stands back up, businesslike once more. “I’ve got officers with eyes around the Falls, checking for signs and portents. Got some people in ND and Minnesota on the lookout too.” She pauses for a thoughtful moment. “…and didn’t you tell me that Sam and Dean have an angel watching over them?”

Bobby shoots Jody a look of respect. He has always admired her ability to stay on track with the things that matter, and her memory is impeccable. “Hem—yeah, Castiel. He’s probably still searching for ‘em with his powers. Dunno how well that’s gonna work out; ‘cause he branded Enochian into Sam and Dean to hide ‘em….” He recalls Dean explaining that the angel had carved protective Enochian sigils into his ribs and winces as he thinks sure, it was nice protection from OTHERS, but the Winchesters still have the power to do something stupid like this on their own. Honestly, his suggested shot-in-the-dark approach may have a better probability of finding something definitive than an angel Mary Poppins-ing across the States. He shakes his head to clear it and looks at Jody again, coming back to the issue at hand. Clearing his throat, “Aheh, so, uh your people may actually come up with somethin’ while I sit here on my ass. My one question is,”

“…Just one?” Jody kids.

Bobby glowers at her. “Yeah, smart ass. Those boys are ALWAYS movin’. But where are they headed now? Staying one step ahead of the angels and the devil, if I know Dean. That’s where all the bodies are comin’ from—he’s ventilating meatsuits like nobody’s business. Sam…. I don’t know about Sam. He’s scared, sure, of his power, and what he can do; but that hasn’t stopped him from usin’ it. He’s gotta think that it’s better than the alternative. That maybe he can stop all’a this craziness if he gets rid of all the angels an’ demons.” Bobby stops, squeezing his eyes shut as he remembers—it had been bad enough sealing Sam in the Panic Room, forcing him to detox; to hear him beg first for freedom and then for death after he’d gotten out—gripping the barrel of Bobby’s rifle and raising it to rest directly over his heart. _Then do it. Shoot me, please. If you don’t –_ and Bobby hadn’t. He couldn’t. But if Sam is full-on using now, without remorse, and Dean has no soul and no wherewithal to stop him; if the boys are aiming to avoid Armageddon by burning Heaven and Hell to the ground via scorching the earth, so to speak…. The middle-aged hunter can hardly fathom this course of action. “But if that ain’t the reason—if Sam’s usin’ his powers for power’s sake and Dean is sympatico with that—” Bobby cannot keep himself from shuddering with horror and sorrow that his boys have fallen so far. He hears Dean’s adamant tone: _I won’t let my brother turn into a monster!_ He had sworn that when they locked up Sam to cure him. What had HAPPENED to his boys since then? What the hell had happened? What had changed them? And if something truly had, then “—then they’re both long gone.” And he can’t handle that. Bobby shoves his books and his journal out of the way, plopping both elbows on the table before him and burying his face in his hands. 

Suddenly Jody’s hand is holding out something to him. His hunting journal that he’d shoved away, flipped open now to the page where he had scrawled cell phone numbers. Her thumb taps on the numbers next to ‘DEAN’. “Call him,” the sheriff says. “Call them both. If you want all the information—they’re both still alive, Bobby. Still here. You can get it.” Her tone is fierce and full of emotions, and Bobby looks up at her. He sees the brightness in her eyes; of tears, of hope, of the desperate wish that SHE could do this too. Could talk to her husband and her son one more time. That she could learn something, anything; everything possible.

Bobby’s shoulders drop and he nods as he takes the notebook from her, pressing her hand as he does so. “Thanks, Sheriff. And if they answer—”

“We can get a GPS fix,” Jody says, sniffing and taking out her radio. “Already on it.” As she relays her request to the station operator, Bobby huffs in appreciation and amusement. Always on point is Jody. “10-26, stand by.” She nods at Bobby. “Okay, you can dial out now.”

Bobby sucks in a steadying breath as he dials in the first number. He figures that he will have to go through three or four before the boys pick up, if they answer any at all. Thus he almost falls out of his wheelchair when he hears the gruff “Yeah?”

His heart skips a beat. “…Dean?”

“Yup, speaking since it’s my phone. Whaddaya want, Bobby?” There is scuffling in the background and what sounds like Sam’s voice asking about him. “-Yeah, it’s him, Sam.” Back into the receiver Dean asks “Well, you still sittin’ on your ass in the house? That’s what you’re callin’ about, right? Need us to pick up something for you or take ya somewhere? Well we’re not a friggin taxi service and we’re pretty busy.”

“Busy with _what_ , boy?” The older man snaps, not wanting Dean to hear how deep those words had cut him. Useless. The word continues pounding through his skull. He shakes his head to clear it and continues “Killing a bunch’a meatsuits? I’ve been checking in on you two idjits, and if your way of dealin’ with the Apocalypse is killing demons—”

Dean chuckles softly, chilling Bobby to the core. “Not just demons. Humans too. Haven’t found many angels to gank yet, though.”

“What about Castiel?”

There is silence, punctuated by a breath. And then, “What about him?”

“He came to see me, Dean. Told me he talked to you.”

Dean’s voice has hardened. “Your point?”

“My POINT is you didn’t stab his ass and send ‘im back to Heaven, so seems you still care about him.” Bobby needs something, anything to let him know that this is still his Dean he is talking to. That his humanity has not totally rotted away. He may not have his soul, but he still has memories, and feelings. He's got to.

But Dean’s voice is flat as he responds “No. He’s just not worth enough to die.”

That’s how you wanna play it then, okay. “And Sam?” Bobby’s voice is shaking. He can’t help it. He catches Jody’s eye and she nods at him to keep talking. “He know why ya didn’t ventilate the angel an’ why you’re killin’ humans now, or is he too busy drinking demon blood?”

Dean shouts in fury, but there is a tremor in his voice when next he speaks. “He KNOWS—! Okay, Bobby?? Is that what you wanna hear? He knows, and it’s been good for us, him havin’ powers!”

Those words and the strength with which Dean speaks them make Bobby’s heart shatter. No, that is not what he wants to hear. That is never what he has wanted to hear. Voice now barely audible, a low broken rumble, he asks “What happened to you, Dean? To not lettin’ your little brother become a monster?”

There is a tiny hitch of noise on Dean’s end. It could be a chuckle or a sob, or maybe just some static; but then Dean continues—and Bobby can visualize his dead eyes as he hears the lack of emotion in Dean's voice— “Well if ya can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Isn’t that what they say?” Another endless moment of silence, and then fateful words: “Goodbye, Bobby.”

“Wait. Dean—” But he has already hung up. There’s nothing left but a dial tone and then static on the line. Bobby slams his phone shut and hits the table with one hand. “Dammit!!”

***

**Pulling into a parking lot. Somewhere in Illinois.**

Dean snaps his phone shut and shoves it into the glove box. He knew that if he answered the phone, Bobby would be on him. He was also pretty damn sure that someone would get a GPS fix on their location. Sam’s wide eyes follow his brother’s movements with concern. Dean has not told him, but truthfully at this point the elder Winchester WANTS a confrontation. He’s tired of all of this sneaking around. At the very least, a knock-down drag-out fight will end all of the well-meaning but useless attempts to ‘help’. He can’t focus on his job with the possibility of a misguided angel showing up anytime hanging over his head.

So after hanging up and shoving the phone away, Dean drives Baby into the nearest parking lot off the main drag. They had made camp in a house in the residential area, but for now….

“Why’re we stopping, Dean?” Sam asks as his brother shifts Baby into ‘Park’ and unbuckles his seatbelt. He gets out and pops her trunk. “What are we doing here?”

“Prepping, Sam.” Dean gets out a shotgun and checks it for residue, pulling out a box of bullets to load into the chamber.

“For _what_? You haven’t said a word since you talked to Bobby—if it even WAS Bobby, which I don’t know for sure ‘cause you won’t tell me anything—just stop, Dean!” Sam reaches out and grabs the chamber of the shotgun so that his brother cannot reload. “Stop for a second and _talk_ to me!”

“What d’you want me to say?” Dean snaps, shoving the gun at his brother in anger. Sam catches it against his chest, wide-eyed at his older brother's vehemence. “Yeah, that was really Bobby, okay? Bitchin’ about our current situation, which ain’t fixin’ anything. And he probably sent our location off to Cas – who’s gonna drag his feathery ass here – and I’m done runnin’, Sam. I’m tired of it. This is where we get him off our asses once and for all.”

Sam stares as his brother pulls out their angel blade from the trunk. “Dean. You’re not gonna kill him.” It isn’t a question.

“Who the fuck says?!” Dean challenged. “Hell, YOU can kill him with all’a that demon blood pumping through your veins, little brother. Don’t tell me you haven’t been itchin’ to waste some angels with it.”

Sam rolls his lip between his teeth and his eyes flash. “Yeah, I wanna waste an angel. A BUNCH of angels. But not Cas.”

Dean rolls his eyes and snatches the gun back from Sam. “Fine.” He tucks the angel blade into the inside pocket of his leather jacket and adds with a slight shrug, “but he may not be alone.”

Sam’s chin comes up. “Well... I’ll do what I’ve gotta do, then.” If Dean is serious about fighting like this, he will make sure he has his back. His tone of voice grows contemplative. “Wonder how much juice it takes to kill a human?” At Dean’s slightly quizzical eyebrow rise, Sam adds “Castiel probably won’t have any angels on his team this time.”

Dean slams the trunk shut with a feral grin. “That’s my boy. Always thinkin’ ahead.”

Sam settles his shoulders and nods. “I’m all in, then.”

After all, Lucifer had told him he was a monster, so what else has he got to lose?

***

**Sioux Falls again.**

“Got it, thanks. Over and out.” Jody clicks off her radio and looks back to Bobby. She sees the look of stark terror and heartbreak on his now-pale face, and goes into Mom-mode. “You should drink something other than alcohol. Here,” She tries to hand him a glass of water but he simply shakes his head and stares at her.

“You get the GPS fix, Sheriff?”

“I have their location, just got it from Central, yes.”

“Well give it to me, Jody. C’mon. We’re burning daylight here.”

“Bobby—”

“Don’t mollycoddle me, dammit!” he snaps. “I’m done wastin’ time, and if you really wanna help me with this, the best way is by gettin’ someone who can help them, and I’ve gotta know where they are so I can do that.” His eyes plead with her. “Please. I know you understand how I’m feelin’ here.” They lock eyes and he says “…if it was your boy—if Owen was on the other end of that phone line...”

Jody’s chin rises and her worried expression changes, morphing into one of serene understanding. “Okay. They’re in Glendale Heights, Illinois, about forty minutes from Chicago.”

“Thank you,” he grunts to her. Now he’s just got to get in touch with that angel. And he is guessing that it might not be that easy for Castiel to take a phone call…. Never mind that he doesn’t have the angel’s number and he’ll be damned if he’s calling Dean again.

This is not the way he wanted to do things. Bobby Singer sighs as he moves his chair into the center of his front room. The sheriff looks on in some amusement as well as shock. “You’ve never done this before, Bobby?”

“Not since I was a boy,” he growls. Again in his head he hears his mother’s voice: _God will punish you!_ “Guess I… lost the taste for it.” He sighs and bows his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “But these’re desperate times.” 

Bobby rolls his chair into the center of the room and clears his throat, gripping one hand with the other. This is gonna be a hell of a long shot; practically impossible for him—he had given the Lord no chance to cash in on his punishment by not doing anything that could attract divine attention… but of course being close to the Winchesters has unasked-for consequences.

The Sioux Falls sheriff is not helping matters either. “Come on, Bobby, you can’t tell me you haven’t sent a hope or question up at LEAST once! And I’m not even talking about anything to a deity specifically—just a general ‘please don’t let me mess up too badly at work today.’” Bobby glowers at her and her eyebrows nearly disappear into her hair. “No? _Really?_ ”

Bobby shakes his head. “Yes, really. But this conversation is tellin’ me quite a bit about you, Sheriff Mills. I may hafta warn the constituents.”

“Oh please. Who would believe you? Soon’s they found out you DON’T pray, they’d assume you’re mistaken. And besides, you’re the town drunk, remember?” Bobby lets out a grunt and rolls his eyes. She rubs his shoulder affectionately to let him know that she is teasing. “So. How d’ya want to do this? I can leave if you need privacy.”

“I’m praying to an angel, Jody, not taking a shit. Stay, or don’t.” He grouses.

“So cranky!” She tsks, and then adds bracingly as she leans against the wall, “It’s going to be okay, Bobby.”

“Yeah, yeah. Here goes nothin’.” Spinning his wheels, the middle-aged hunter bows his head again, shutting his eyes this time. “Our Father who’s, uh, in Heaven,” he begins. “I actually don’t need to talk to You—I’ve gotta speak to the angel Castiel. It’s urgent. I—oh, balls!” He swears, slamming his fist on the arm of his wheelchair. “He doesn’t know who I am, if there’s anyone even listenin’, and if that angel DOES hear me, there ain’t a single reason for him—”

“Hello, Bobby.”

Bobby whips around so fast that he overbalances his chair. Luckily Castiel is close enough to right it by grabbing the handles. Jody stares for a millisecond open-mouthed and then yanks her gun out and trains it on the chest of the man who has just materialized in the middle of her friend’s living room. “All right, who the hell are you??”

“Relax, Sheriff,” Bobby sighs. “This is the angel.”

With her voice high and squeaky, Jody replies “Oh, I’m perfectly relaxed. This is absolutely normal, for an attractive man in a trench coat to appear after a prayer—BARELY a prayer, more like a crappy evidence request…” Hoo, I’m rambling. Breathe, Jody, breathe.

“Will you put the gun away please?” Bobby asks her. “It ain’t gonna do either of us any good for you to shoot him.” Jody slowly lowers her pistol. Bobby nods at her. “Good, now. Sheriff Mills, this is Castiel, angel of the Lord. Castiel, this is—”

“Jody Mills, sheriff of Sioux Falls. Recently lost her husband and son to the risen dead.” The angel steps forward, hand outstretched, eyes sympathetic. “I am sorry for your losses and for your pain.”

“It’s—fine,” Jody says, dazed for a moment as she shakes his hand. She blinks hard and pulls herself together as best as she can. “I mean, I’m sure it’s the way of things, right?”

Bobby snorts derisively at that comment and the angel Castiel lowers his eyes. “…I used to be able to say with certainty what the way of things was,” the angel says. “But recent events have given me – doubts.” He raises his eyes to catch hers and to look at Bobby as well. “I am no longer sure that the way of things is always right. Which is one reason why I am here.” He inclines his upper body in what appears to be a slight bow, turning to face Bobby directly. “You said your message was urgent?”

“Yeah, it is. Jody traced a signal for me, so I know where Dean is. Or was five minutes ago. Odds are Sam’s still with him—I couldn’t get much direct info outta Dean, but I heard Sam’s voice in the background on his phone.”

Castiel is on high alert instantly. “How did you accomplish this feat? I have been following the two of them – driving – for weeks.”

“Sheriff’s boys used a Global Positioning System on Dean’s phone to figure out where he is—an’ I called him.”

“You spoke with Dean? How is he?”

“He’s—” _a cold bastard, immediately called out my weak spot, nonchalant about icin’ people—innocent people, not just demons. Not concerned about bein’ monstrous._ “He’s not himself.” _And he might never be again at the rate things are goin’. When’s the last time we had anything even remotely resembling a win?_ “Look, Castiel,” Bobby speaks gruffly as he writes the address down on a slip of paper, “You use your own judgement, but if there’s no way to bring those boys back to themselves safe,” his voice thickens and then catches a bit. “…you got to end it, you understand me? Before they hurt themselves any more—or hurt anyone else—” tears are filling his eyes now, but he forges on: “—you don’t let them. You’ll be savin’….” It is now that he cannot go on, but silently starts to cry.

Castiel feels his own eyes fill; and at first he thinks it is because of his vessel—Jimmy’s emotions welling up, as they often do. He is a feeling individual—but that is only for a split second, because Castiel actually feels an ache cause his torso to seize up as he imagines the possibility of having to kill Dean, and Sam too. And for Bobby to tell him to do so if he sees no other option—those are Bobby’s adopted SONS—there must be no hope left within him. No cure for the Boy King, and no way to put Dean’s soul back inside him… Cas could locate the soul, he knows it so well – if he had the time, but with his powers diminishing can he even place the soul back in Dean’s body? Would Dean want him to, or even think about allowing it, if the angel had to kill his brother first? And what of Adam’s mission—would he willingly walk away from killing Dean? There are so many variables, so many questions that the angel has no way to answer. So he says to the sheriff about Bobby “Please, take care of him while I am gone,” and then to Bobby himself, the angel says, his blue eyes blazing with sincerity and intensity “Thank you for trusting me, Bobby. I will find them. And I will not let you down.”

The grizzled hunter lets out a wet hiccough and swallows hard, blinking away his tears and composing himself. He reaches out to the angel and grips him by the arm before letting go. “Good luck, son,” he croaks out. “And thank you.” Doing his damndest to smile encouragingly and give the angel some sort of reassurance, whether Castiel needs it or not, Bobby adds gruffly “All right, no more sappy faces – get goin’, ya idjit!”

The angel bows his head in acknowledgement and with the last of his teleportation strength, returns to the back seat of his vehicle.

***

**On the road again.**

Adam almost crashes the car.

“What the _hell_ —? You gotta WARN me when you do someth- when you're gonna…dis _appear_ like that, Castiel!”

“Apologies.” Castiel leans forward over the seats and holds out the piece of paper that Bobby gave him. “We need to drive to this place.”

Adam blinks and takes the paper from the angel, eyes flicking from the road to it and then back at Castiel before focusing again on the highway before him. “O-kay... You mind explaining why you came back with this—thing—after you just…did your disappearing act? Again,” he adds the last word in a mumble, shaking his head and gripping the wheel with white knuckles. As he moves into another lane, his hands slip on the steering apparatus, palms sweating. Pull it together, Milligan, he cautions himself. Come on. Adam blows a blast of air out of both cheeks and ducks his face, tapping the edge of the steering wheel four times with the fingers of his right hand. He licks his lips and tries to explain what he’s feeling, as Castiel is looking at him with those concerned baby-blues. “…I’m sorry for freaking out, but I was driving, and you said something, and then you were—you were just—gone.” Adam dares to peek back at the angel who is leaning on the seat with his arms folded, listening. The young man swallows and chuckles without mirth. “I know that’s normal for angels, I mean…I guess it must be, but I gotta admit I’m not used to this Star Trek crap. Heh. Especially since I had no idea who was beaming you up.” He nods at the piece of paper Castiel had handed to him. “…Who even gave you that address anyway?”

Castiel’s lips flatten as he thinks about how best to describe Bobby. “I…went to see Sam and Dean’s surrogate father. He prayed to me, which is why I—left so suddenly.” Businesslike, he adds “We must go to this address and meet with – my friends. You wanted me to take you to the murderer of your mother, well…” Castiel settles his shoulders and breathes deeply. “…We must hurry. They may be moving on and making an escape once they know that we are close. First we have to – purchase some supplies.”

“Supplies? …Supplies like what?” Adam demands.

“Remember what I told you about demons, they can be ousted by certain means such as salt rounds and pentagrams. We must prepare ourselves—”

Adam snorts. “Well, _I’m_ gonna get a different weapon. Like a heavy metal bat or something.” He looks over at the angel and Castiel squints back at him. “…Hey, I think that it’d be easier to knock somebody out with a big metal bar than with a…a pound of salt or whatever.”

The angel’s eyes crinkle and then a smile so slight that Adam thinks he might have imagined it lifts the edges of Castiel’s mouth. “That is a valid point. Let us go.”


	11. Chapter Eleven.

**Glendale Heights, Illinois. 7:45pm.**

Adam and Castiel drive down the main drag of this little town, seeing a small strip center with several eateries—Joseph’s Pizza, El Tesoro (which advertises ninety-nine cent tacos), a Vietnamese place... All haunts that would be ordinarily frequented by Dean, were he on a regular case as a human, thinks the angel. Well, perhaps not the Vietnamese one. Pity.

Castiel’s personal reverie is interrupted as, while he leans forward to inspect the places they drive past, his gaze alights on a figure walking alongside a side street, heading past neighborhoods. “Look there,” he says quietly to Adam, touching the young man’s shoulder.

A place in fricking Illinoisan suburbia—what the hell is the murderous bastard DOING here, if not scoping out another innocent victim? Adam grips the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles whiten, the joints bulging so that he can practically glimpse the bones beneath his skin.

“We should pass beside this area first, for purposes of reconnaissance,” the angel suggests as Adam catches sight of the same person Castiel’s eyes had caught—broad shoulders, dark jacket, short hair. He is heading away from them.

It had been damn dark in his house when he got home that awful night, but the set of those shoulders alone tells Adam that this is his mother's murderer. For that fact on its own he is shocked by the angel's suggestion; but after Castiel explained a little more about the guy, the surer Adam is that this is not an intelligent course of action. He stares at the angel in disbelief. “So, we're...we’re just gonna drive PAST this guy? The longer we drive around, the more likely it is that he’ll _see_ us, Castiel. ‘Specially in this car.”

“Well, what would you suggest, then, Adam?” The angel responds stiffly. He does not see the necessity of insulting his vehicle in such a way, nor his intelligence. Ordinarily he could follow Dean easily with the use of his power, but as it fades they are forced to take a frustratingly mundane approach.

Adam rolls his eyes. The angel is surprisingly touchy about strange things. “Look…” he softens his tone. “I’m not an expert, but I’d say running down a guy with a car is a lot more noticeable than parking and following him on foot to…wherever he’s going.”

“With the proper exorcising tools we will be all right doing either,” the angel announces as he lifts several paper bags off of the car floor.

Adam huffs air out of his nose. “Yeah, with those. Right.” After Castiel gave him that address and they reached the Illinois border, they had stocked up on what the angel insisted were demon-hunting supplies. Adam let him go at it without comment or complaint. Whatever made the guy feel better; he still was not sure about all of this supernatural stuff. A solid hit to the head with a blunt instrument suits Adam just fine. Maybe adding a couple extra swings for good measure. So Adam bought a tire iron. Apparently an angel who is teaching himself to drive does not see the necessity of already having one of those in his car.

Suddenly Castiel tenses next to Adam. Well, he grows tensER and says “Adam. Slow down.” At the next intersection stands the man they had both seen and followed. He is wearing the same jacket from before, but now he is facing them, apple-green eyes boring into the car…. The sunset gives those eyes an otherworldly glow as he stands wearing the same devil-may-care expression with the cocky smirk that he had upon seeing Adam enter his mudroom. Adam’s shoulders get so stiff they could slice through concrete. “What do I—what do we do?” Adam whispers pleadingly to Castiel, stormy blue eyes wide. “He’s right THERE—”

The angel puts a gentle hand on the driver’s arm reassuringly. “We will continue to follow him.”

As if on cue, the coated man continues walking, farther from the center of town, past several side streets leading to neighborhoods. Adam is no longer thinking about his resolve to park the car immediately and follow on foot. He is here, this is happening, and that slick son of a bitch isn’t going to get away.

Incongruously, a shiny chimney-like tube and several enormous metal outbuildings appear in the distance as an expanse of grass stretches on the left-hand side of the road just opposite the neighborhoods. Some kind of power plant or a paper factory or something, maybe? Whatever it is, the sunlight glinting off of the metal almost makes Adam lose sight of the person they are tailing. If it had not been for Castiel’s swift grab of his forearm and nod towards Hale Court, down which Dean Winchester is walking, he would have lost sight of the guy. Adam notes the driveways and vehicles of a quiet-looking suburban neighborhood, not unlike his own; and he notices a train bridge stretching a half-mile or so down the road behind the houses. He sees Dean head towards the fifth house on the left. Wonder how he got a hold of that real estate? The owners likely met a swift and bloody end. Or perhaps not so swift… Adam tenses and readies himself to turn the car, but the angel holds out his hand in a staying motion. “What?” Adam snaps. “Are you gonna tell me to slow down? That we need to do some more…reconnaissance for the mission? Get out the spy gear, eh?” His tone of voice is so dry it burns.

Castiel blinks and shakes his head. “No, Adam, not yet. But we _do_ require a plan; we cannot afford to go in with—guns blazing.” Adam snorts and jerks his head, licking his lips as if about to retort. “Listen,” the angel says fiercely. “I know that you are angry. More than angry, that…you are feeling incredible, terrible pain. But you also have not eaten a full meal in almost two days, Adam. I know I cannot ask you to sleep tonight and for us to return tomorrow morning—” The young man makes a sharp movement as if to strike the angel but does not finish it. “I do not expect you to accept that course of action, but please,” Castiel pins his pleading blue eyes on Adam’s furious ones, “Please let us at least eat something and establish our options before we go in.”

Adam sighs deeply and bounces in his seat. He wants to tear the angel’s well-meaning head off, but damn it, Castiel is right—he hasn’t eaten in a while and to tell the truth, he’s scared. He doesn’t know what he is going to find once he steps into that house. He wants to be as prepared as possible. He wants to be able to make that man pay for doing what he’d done. Sucking air through his nose and blinking rapidly, the young man closes his eyes tightly for a moment and nods several times. “All right. All right, let’s …let’s go eat.” He opens his eyes again and blows out air, pressing down on the gas pedal and driving past the neighborhood entrance.

*** 

Without more than a cursory glance over his shoulder as the car passes by, Dean knows both the angel and the kid will be coming back. Wishes he could follow ‘em and find out their plans, but that wouldn’t be as fun. Besides, he needs to be sure Sam is prepped and ready for whatever is gonna go down.

It was fortunate for the family that resided in the fifth house on Hale Court that they had been talked into renting it out for the season rather than outright selling. Gave Sam and Dean a legitimate way to land there and not be required to get friendly with any of the neighbors. At least, that was how Dean justified things. Sam breathed easier about the legitimacy of at least one aspect of this crap fest into which they had gotten themselves. Dean wonders if his brother will ever become comfortable with this anti-Apocalypse plan of theirs. He wishes Sam would, but at the same time hopes he doesn’t.

This is not one of their cases they can leave behind. Nor is it a choice they can simply back out of. You either keep on fighting, keep on moving forward, or you stop. And when you stop you’re dead. That is how Dean sees it—the only way to see it, really. Go or stop, kill or be killed. Let the end of the world occur or don’t. Sit back and let crap get dumped on you forever, or do what you have to do—no matter how awful and bloody it gets. Dean refuses to be anybody’s Stepford bitch, in Paradise or otherwise. That’s just the way it is. Some things will never change.

***

**El Tesoro Restaurant, Glendale Heights, Illinois. 8:35pm.**

El Tesoro is a loud place in color scheme even when only three tables are full. The bright turquoise walls and three-dimensional carvings painted garishly in shades of coral pink, bright orange, and lime green. Bright lights illuminate the kitchen area behind the bar, and waist-high partitions with desert scenes upon them separate sections of the restaurant’s interior rather than full walls. An old-fashioned jukebox blinks its neon lights spasmodically and waiters carry margarita bowls to almost every patron.

Castiel and Adam descend somewhat reluctantly into this chaos, Adam instantly veering towards a table in the corner past the bar and near the restrooms. Cas inquires before sitting down whether this establishment serves ninety-nine cent tacos.

“It does, but you need to sit down before ya order, hombre,” the closest waiter informs him helpfully, flashing a broad grin.

“Of course,” the angel says in his gravelly voice. “My mistake. Apologies.” He presses his lips together and his eyes flicker downward in what appears to be embarrassment as he pivots and notices Adam, seated already and concealing himself behind a specials menu.

“Our, uh, waitress just came over here,” Adam says. “What do you want to drink? I ordered some water for us, but…if you want something else…,”

Castiel smooths his tie as he sits and raises his head and one index finger. “I require tequila.”

“Uh—okay,” Adam blinks and draws his head back slightly, raising his eyebrows as their smiling waitress returns with the water and the angel asks her for tequila. “Are you…sure about that, though? I mean, should you be drinking before—”

“I will not imbibe enough alcohol to become intoxicated,” is the firm reply. “To do that would require me to drink the contents of an entire liquor store.” Adam stares at the other in shock to gauge whether or not he is joking. But the look on Castiel’s face and the manner in which he speaks when measured against everything else he has said so far in their acquaintance suggests that he is being serious about this. Okay. May as well move on.

“So…um, you said we need a plan to go up against your—friends.” Adam continues to have trouble processing the ‘friend’ part, no matter how many times the other says it.

“Yes. I will bring exorcism supplies as a final resort, but I believe talking is the best choice initially. Once we discover a way into the house—”

“Hang on. You want to TALK to the guy who cut our electrical wiring, knocked out my mother, and tied her to a chair before stabbing—what even makes you think this guy will listen to reason?”

“Dean does not typically listen to what most humans would call ‘reason’, but if I can convince him that his actions are hurting his brothers, and he can protect him, them both, if he stops—” Castiel lowers his voice and leans closer to Adam over the table surface. “We may have a chance.”

Adam scoffs. “Getting this psychopath to stop for the sake of his brother is your entire plan? That’s pretty frickin thin, dude. What, you’re just gonna…talk things out with him?”

“Yes.” Castiel takes the alcohol that their waitress hands him. “And you are his brother as well,” he reminds the other before looking up at their waitress and asking “May we have some of your ninety-nine cent tacos?”

“Si, sir. But just so you know, they are small so you may want multiple, and you can get different meats inside them. Ground beef, carne asada, pork, or chicken.”

“Thank you. We will have—eight, I think. What sort of meat do you prefer, Adam?”

“Ground beef,” the young man mutters, glowering down at the table and wrapped utensils to avoid looking right at Castiel. His shoulders settle as the waitress shifts, seeming uncomfortable. He can’t blame her, and none of this is her problem or her fault, so he raises his face with a small smile for her. “…I mean, I’d like ground beef in my tacos, please. Thank you.” She smiles back as she makes a note on her pad.

“I would like to have the carne asada, please. Thank you.” Castiel fumbles with their menus as he attempts to hand them to the waitress, dropping one. Adam catches it as it strikes and slides off the edge of the table. He hands it to the waitress, who says “Got it. Your meal will be out in a few minutes,” She sashays away with their menus without commenting on the near-mishap.

Adam places his palms on the edge of the table, curling his fingers around the rough wood and as soon as the waitress is out of earshot, he snaps his stormy-ocean blue gaze up to fasten intently on Castiel’s. “Let’s get one thing straight here, okay?”

“Okay,” the angel leans forward too, linking his fingers together, eyes crinkling slightly at the outer edges with concern. “What is it, Adam?”

Adam bounces up and down in his carved chair and his eyes flicker downward and then back to blaze at the other again. He snaps. “They are NOT my family. They KILLED my family, you understand? I’m not gonna just—just stand there and…and let the guy who killed my mother walk away fr-free and clear because you want to talk him out of doing bad. What the hell…? No! No, I won’t—” He breathes out and shakes his head with a gulp, voice cracking and growing almost inaudible. “If I get a chance, I have to make him pay. I won’t let him hurt anyone else based on your word. And I have to know WHY.” He cannot go on, but lowers his head and closes his eyes, lips and hands trembling.

Castiel opens his mouth to say something conciliatory, or perhaps in an attempt to persuade Adam to take another course of action, but the young man does not acknowledge him. He rips open the ring of paper holding his napkin around the silverware and spreads the napkin across his lap, taking a sip of water and blotting his lips dry. The waitress returns with their plates of four tacos each. Both thank her and begin to eat in silence.

When they are given the check at 9:50, Adam hands over his card without comment as Castiel carefully calculates their tip and leaves the proper amount of cash behind.

Adam leaves the restaurant with his stomach roiling as he thinks about the fact that this could potentially be his last meal; not to mention it was the last meal he was going to cook for his mom—he had been so excited that eggs were on sale and he was going to make her taco salad…. He closes his eyes with a hand on the door to the establishment, fingers curling around its handle. He knows they are going to go out there, get back in the car, and head to that house again. To the end of this thing, whatever it is. He still doesn’t know what he wants out of this, other than closure. He wants to know why his mother is dead, and he wants to make the man pay who killed her. But Adam finds himself hesitating. He feels a pit in his abdomen, and there is no medical explanation for it, unless the restaurant served bad meat. But he doubts it. 

It is ten pm now, and he usually does not eat this late in the evening, but that is not what the problem is. He just feels…wrong. Movement beside him shakes Adam loose from his worries as Castiel moves forward and pushes the door open, and the taller being’s blue eyes catch Adam’s. The angel’s lips flatten out and his gaze flickers over the young man with concern. Adam shakes his head and huffs out a breath as his hair fluffs up away from his forehead. “I’m fine, Castiel. Let’s just—let’s just get this over with, okay?”

The angel nods. “Okay.” He holds the door open for Adam and they head out to the car.

Adam turns into the Hale Court neighborhood and checks on the cars parked on the street and in driveways. He clenches his teeth and looks at Castiel as the angel checks out the houses around them. Several do not have cars in their driveways; perhaps this is a big week for vacations in northern Illinois. Adam turns the wheel hand over hand and looks behind him as he maneuvers the Lincoln into a space across the street from the house that Dean had disappeared into. Why he has chosen to meander through a nice little suburban subdivision is beyond Adam. There is no car in the driveway; it had backed out and headed away, but Castiel told Adam they should stay put. And sure enough, the murderer himself had come out of the house and circled it, checking the windows, he guessed. Going around to the side and back of the house. They idle and watch as the minutes stretch into almost a half an hour.

“We need to be certain there are no…complications when we decide to go in,” says Castiel.

Adam puts the Lincoln in park and glances at the angel in the passenger seat as the man they had followed disappears inside. Castiel is squinting through the trees planted along the boulevard and tracing over the house, seeming confused. Well, that makes two of them. At least he isn’t alone. Turning off the engine, Adam withdraws the key from the ignition and hands it over to the angel before unbuckling his seatbelt and ducking to pick up his chosen weapon off the floor.

Castiel carefully tucks both the car keys and the exorcising equipment into his coat pockets before exiting the vehicle. Adam does the same, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet as he lets out a pent-up breath and clenches his hand tightly around the tire iron. It is now 11:42pm.

***

**House on Hale Court. Glendale Heights, Illinois.**

It is close to midnight now. Dean strolls into the echoey basement room that connects the garage to the house he and his brother have commandeered. Now that he has checked the perimeter and made sure Cas can find the access door, he is ready for whatever. Dean takes out his cell phone and messages Sam. Hey where u at?

Sam’s text tone chimes back at him. Getting ready, dude. Chill

Dont tell me what to do. Im @ the house waitin for your ass.

Still don’t get why you want to do this, D.

Cuz its what im good at, Sammy.

Dean can all-too-easily imagine the rolling eyes and hear his little brother’s exasperated sigh before Sam responds again with: Whatever. Otw. Don’t go skinny-dipping, wouldn’t want the cops 2 get called.

There is a pool in the backyard of the house next door, and at the insinuation in his brother’s words—don’t want the cops to get called YET—Dean rolls his eyes. _Smartass._ He had not actually thought about hopping the fence and going skinny-dipping, but now that Sam mentioned it… No. Focus, Dean. He moves toward the back of the room when the door from the garage rattles and then here comes Cas, blasting it open with his foot and bursting in that way. Of all the possible implements to use—way different from the exploding light fixtures and shaking boards of the angel’s initial appearance when he and Dean first met.

But Castiel’s head is erect as he strides in, eyes flashing the same way they had in Bobby’s old barn as they flit around the room now before zeroing in on him like chips of ice in front of a fire. “Dean,” The angel intones softly.

Fingers flicking in a lazy wave, the demon replies “Heya, Cas. Guess it was too much to ask for ya not to follow me.”

Stepping across the threshold and coming farther into the room, Castiel nods solemnly. “I suppose it was.”

The other lets out a “heh” as his eyes move to study the human figure that has entered behind the angel. He is slight of build and his elbows stick out as he grips a tire iron with white knuckles. Dean takes in the messy hair a little lighter than his, the stormy blue eyes full of hurt and hate, and the clenched teeth over his tight stance. “Looks like ya picked up a drifter on the way,” Dean adds flippantly.

“No, he didn’t ‘pick me up,’” Adam says through clenched teeth, moving closer as well before Castiel can answer. “ _You_ killed my mom.”

“Did I?” Dean cocks his head in a malicious parody of thoughtful confusion. “Huh. Don’t seem to recall her. I’ve killed a lotta people in my time, kid.”

Adam is not having it. “Her name was Kate Milligan, you son of a bitch!” He spits and lunges forward, but then he sees Castiel make a slight movement; his arm out, parallel to the ground. His palm is flat. _Stop._

Dean makes a show of thinking about the name, infuriating Adam, and that is when Sam comes in, wiping blood off his face and pushing back his hair. “What did I miss?” He asks, his eyes flickering from Adam to Cas to Dean.

“Oh, not much. This kid was just sayin’ that I killed his mom.” Dean shrugs nonchalantly before adding “…which is true.”

“Well, you must have had a reason,” Sam says easily, eyes going from his brother’s to rest on Adam again, whose face is white with fury. “My brother doesn’t arbitrarily kill anybody.”

“Oh. Really,” Adam says with caustic vitriol.

“Yes, really.” Sam’s eyes are full of sincerity, and then his voice grows cold. “She must have deserved it.” Now it is Castiel who steps forward, closer to Adam, his arm stretched out in an automatic impulse to protect and provide comfort to the young man. Sam notes the movement. “Oh, hey, Cas. It’s good to see you,” he says, voice sounding surprised but containing warmth.

The angel stands beside Adam now, hand clasping his right shoulder as the young man breathes shakily. “I wish that I could say the same, Sam,” Castiel replies, gaze sorrowful as he takes note of the brightness in the other’s eyes, far more than normal. His pupils are dilated and cheeks flushed. Behind Sam’s warmth and sincerity is a manic power that vibrates through the air around the four of them; a power that could only have come from drinking copious amounts of demon blood.

Sam laughs lightly at the angel. “Dean told me you were trying to save us. How’s it going?”

“It is—” Castiel starts to say, but

“SAVE them??” Adam cuts across him now, eyes wide with horror. This is not what he had understood by ‘talking things out’. “Are you serious, Castiel? How do you save a cold-blooded murderer?!”

“Look, kid,” Dean snaps now, his patience wearing thin, “I’ve killed a lot more things than just your mother. And as far as I’m concerned, she could’ve deserved to die for a lotta reasons, but I chose one. Fucking my father.”

“You ever think your old man was the asshole who slept with my mother and then LEFT her?! She raised me by herself! I never HAD a father!”

Dean makes a threatening movement, but Sam is there first. In the blink of an eye he has Adam by the jacket, looming over him as he backs the young man against the wall. The taller man grins down, his hazel eyes bright; the shorter man’s arms are at his sides now but the tire iron is still clenched in his left hand. He avoids Sam’s gaze.

The tall Winchester had not been listening closely to the conversation; his veins and arteries are thrumming with the power of demon blood and it roars in his ears, but he sure heard the words that had infuriated Dean, and that is unacceptable. Nobody talks to his older brother like that and gets away with it.

Sam speaks scarcely above a whisper, in the same sincere warm voice he had used with Cas moments ago; the same tone as when he had tortured that female demon for information on Crowley’s whereabouts weeks before. “You’re not very bright, are you?” Making a show of not knowing the other’s name, he pauses.

 _“Adam.”_ The younger grits out. They’re going to remember my name when this bullshit is all over.

“Adam! Right.” Sam bobs his head. He looks the young man up and down critically before calling back to his brother, “I thought you said he was just somebody Cas conned into helping him with the whole ‘I’m an angel of the Lord’ thing, Dean.” Adam’s eyes snap up to meet the other’s as he says this, and Sam smirks, his dilated eyes flashing completely black. He tilts his head to one side, savoring the alarm rising in Adam’s face as the medical student struggles to comprehend and conceptualize what he is seeing. Sam is obviously on SOMEthing; with the evidence before him of the heightened color in his face, the inability to focus, the rapid heart rate, he would guess that this guy is amped on amphetamines. But his _eyes…_

“That’s right,” Dean’s cold voice responds. “We can kill two birds with one stone here, Sammy.” Send the message that the only guy who’s busting his ass to save us isn’t gonna be ABLE to save us. “And get rid of all the other complications…,”

Now Sam is studying Adam as if the younger man is part of a mildly intriguing nature program on television. He shakes his head from side to side slowly, movements as smooth and hypnotic as those of a snake about to strike. “You’re just a kid in way over his head,” he croons.

Suddenly a hand is grabbing onto Sam’s arm, fingers tightening, and a limb covered in tan cloth whips the tall man around. Castiel. A firm expression rests on the angel’s face, and his blue eyes appear cold at first glance but betray sorrow in their depths as he meets Sam’s once-familiar gaze with his own. His chin rises and his blue eyes glow icy-gold as he sees Adam’s eyes fill with fear. “Sam. Stop,” Castiel speaks slowly, voice clipped and fierce. “That is enough.”

Sam blinks and his eyes widen as he raises his eyebrows in surprise at the intensity of the angel’s concern, though the quirk of his lips shows his amusement. “Why? Adam came here looking for answers, didn’t he?” He nods at the young man. “So he needs to know exactly what he’s dealing with.”

Cas frowns, a memory surfacing. For a brief, beautiful second, Sam sounded like his friend again; worried about the well-being of a civilian and the obstacles they faced whilst fighting a monster and fretting over their options. _But you are the monster now, Sam,_ the angel thinks bitterly as he sees the Winchester man’s sly grin. A hollow ache fills the angel’s chest as he reminds himself that this is not the same Sam he is currently facing. This is an abomination, a perverted reflection of his friend, and Bobby has asked him to end Sam’s suffering. He grips harder on the fabric of his friend’s sleeve and his other palm presses against Sam’s opposite shoulder. “That may be so, but I cannot allow you to harm him for not knowing.”

Sam gives Castiel an once-over and straightens up, settling his shoulders. “Not that you could really STOP me, but…” He lowers his hand from where he had pressed it against the wall to menace Adam. Castiel lets go of his sleeve with reluctance as Sam raises both hands and smiles. “…for the record, I wasn’t going to.” Cas stares hard at Sam, automatically shifting his body and feet in front of Adam the second the Winchester backs away. Concerned by the alacrity of Sam’s retreat and puzzled by the statement that he apparently was not going to hurt Adam, the angel slowly raises his palm as if in preparation for smiting. 

Sam shoots his friend an amused glance and chuckles. Castiel notices that the other’s hands are still raised, and Sam curls his fingers quickly in a ‘come and get me’ gesture. The angel stiffens and glances back at Adam, and then at Dean, before giving the Boy King one last hard look and lowering his arm. Sam pushes his lips together and raises his eyebrows a little—in disappointment or relief, the angel cannot rightly tell—before shrugging and strolling back over to Dean.

Dean, who has gotten bored of their bickering stand-off by this point and is checking out his fingernails, debating whether he should take a dip in the next-door neighbor’s pool, naked or not. He focuses on his brother as Sam walks back over and jerks his head with an irritable “Are you done intimidating the kid now? ‘Cause I’ve got better shit to do than explain my ‘reasoning’ for killing his mom.”

Sam’s own head jerks backwards just a little in surprise. “Well, yeah. But you _did_ have a reason for killing her, right? Was she a monster or an angel or something?” His older brother does not respond immediately and turns his head away, causing Sam’s brows to furrow in concern and confusion. “…Dean?”

Dean snaps his head back up and glares at Sam. “No, she wasn’t a monster or an angel, Sammy. She had sex with Dad and he gave her a son, but she wasn’t MOM. She dishonored Mom’s memory, her and that kid—” He jerks his arm out swiftly with an open palm and his demonic power slams Adam into the wall. The young man lets out a strangled half-yelp as his back slams into the cinder block. Dean clenches his fist and then extends a shaking finger. “That kid right there is our BROTHER. He’s got a home, he’s goin’ to college, and has a friggin apple-pie life!”

“Whoa, wait. Are you saying—?” Sam’s eyes are wide as saucers and flicking from Dean to Adam and back again. “You’re saying he’s RELATED to us, and you—and you killed his mom??”

“Am I not speakin’ English?” Dean growls. “Yes, that’s what I’m sayin’, Sam!” He rounds on Adam, lowering his head and staring him down: “Y’know, I should have killed you when I had the chance.” Adam struggles, arm stretching to the side, mouth open like a baby bird’s as he gasps for air. Dean carefully moves closer to him like a panther stalking its prey and Adam stills as he nears. “But I made the mistake of thinking it wasn’t worth it.” He clenches his fist again and Adam groans, head and torso bowing forward as he spits blood. Castiel tries to help, to loosen Dean’s hold, but his power is failing in earnest now. He is not strong enough. Dean whirls on the angel. “Lost your mojo, eh, Cas? Damn. Not easy bein’ a human, is it? Dealing with so much pain.” He withdraws his pistol from his waistband and cocks it. Adam falls from the wall to his knees with a sharp sound as all of Dean’s attention focuses on his angel friend. Adam clutches his side, coughing. Small bursts of blood continue to fall from between his lips—Dean had thrown him so hard against the wall, whatever his fist clenching did, it must have punctured something in his abdomen.

Sam has followed his brother but remains behind him, mind whirling like a dervish. He cannot believe that Dean—that he would kill Adam’s mother in cold blood, that she was a human, innocent of everything except sleeping with their dad. But if THAT was a crime, there should be a lot more dead bodies around. Their father wasn’t exactly a monk. And this means Adam is their family, their blood, their brother. _I have a little brother._ And his first act had been to scare the living daylights out of the kid and throw his mother’s death in his face. What kind of brother was he? What kind of person? _Well I think you know that already, Sam~_ Lucifer’s voice singsongs through his brain pan, and he visualizes the amusement in the Devil’s eyes again; it strikes him like a knife to the gut. _You’re a monster._ And here Dean is about to kill his best friend, the angel who had gripped him tight and raised him from perdition. Dean isn’t meant to be the monster in this story; that job has always fallen to Sam. He reaches out to his older brother now. “Dean…it’s _Cas._ ” Don’t do this, he wants to plead. Don’t be like me.

But “Yeah,” Dean growls, leaping forward and grabbing the front of the angel’s trench coat. He twists and bunches the lapels together tightly against Castiel’s windpipe, making him gasp for air. “And if I don’t do this, he’s never gonna stop chasing us.” He gives the angel a sharp shake. “ARE you, Cas?”

Staring at his friend evenly despite the fact that he is struggling for breath, the Fallen angel gets out “No, I will not. I am here to help you, Dean. It is my—” Before he can finish, Dean swears and belts him across the face with the gun. As the other blinks and looks back at him, blue eyes pleading as bright blood gushes out of both of his nostrils, the Winchester snarls and steps backwards. Cocking the weapon, he shoots Castiel in the left kneecap.

The angel drops.

“Don’t say it’s your job, Cas. Don’t you friggin _dare._ ” Castiel groans in pain, both hands instantly going to grip his leg as he stands shakily, blood spurting from the bullet wound. Dean shakes his head back and forth slowly. “You should’ve just left us alone.” He aims and shoots again, this time hitting the angel’s right shoulder before moving fast as lightning to grab hold of Cas as he begins to slump forward. Grabs the angel by the shoulder that he just perforated with a bullet and digs his thumb into the other’s tender bleeding flesh. Castiel shrieks, a keening agonized sound, involuntary like that of a wounded animal. Dean bares his teeth and leans in close to the angel. “Feel that? Well, so ya get it through your thick head, this is me sayin’ Let. Us. Go. Because Sam doesn’t want any’a your help either. Do ya, little brother?” He inquires over his shoulder.

Before Sam has the chance to do anything other than stare at Dean in befuddled horror, what sounds like a violent cough erupts from Castiel. He ducks forward, bending over Dean’s neck and shoulder, and barks out “Adam, now!” and a tire iron swung like a baseball bat with all the force of a son’s fury clocks Dean across the side of the head. He drops like a ton of bricks, grip going slack. Wincing mightily, the angel drops to his uninjured knee and begins spreading salt from the packs he had stuffed inside his trench coat pockets. “I am sorry that I must do this, Dean,” he says to his friend’s now inert form, and then with a deep breath he continues: “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus—”

Of a sudden the now nearly-powerless angel lifts up into the air and is flung back into the wall behind him, hitting it so hard that the building shakes to its foundation and a shower of plaster dust rains down. He grits his teeth and groans, cords standing out in his neck, but he is unable even to struggle.

“CASTIEL!!” Adam shouts as Sam strides forward, long arm raised up and eyes blazing with shock and fury.

“You’re EXORCISING him? Seriously?! You’ll take him out of his own body, Cas!”

The angel tries to speak and fails miserably. “Let go of him!” Adam charges at Sam, having recovered his strength by now, and swings the tire iron again, but Sam ducks beneath the blow and lifts his other hand, hurling the young man back.

“Devil’s…Trap,” Cas croaks. At least, that is what Sam thinks he hears. “Sam, you have...you have to stop this. Please. Let me help you and Dean… go back to being human.”

“What, so we can play our roles and just let the Apocalypse happen? Say ‘yes’ to the end of the world?” Sam shakes his head frantically, tone fierce. “No, I can’t do that.” He huffs out a hard breath, nostrils flaring and lips shaking. “…I won’t.” And I’m already a monster, he adds in his head silently. So what does any of this matter?

It is now that the older Winchester starts to stir, rolling onto his side and grunting as he opens his eyes. He tries to stand and staggers; his equilibrium is obviously off and he cannot keep his balance. “Sam…,” he croaks, hand lifting to touch the lengthy dent in the side of his skull, the swelling, purpling bar of flesh that Adam had hit.

“Hang on, Dean. I’m coming—” the younger man turns to help his brother get to his feet and stops short with a jerk. Both of Sam’s arms are still outstretched, holding Castiel and Adam to the walls. He had almost forgotten that he was using his powers.

“You have to—release—one of us,” Castiel says quietly. Sam glowers at him and scuffs the piles of salt away with one shoe. “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursion infernalis adversii.” Castiel continues the exorcism under his breath quickly because he has no other choice. With his powers failing utterly, what else is there to do? He must cure Dean, for how else will he be able to get through to Sam?

Dean roars and thrashes spasmodically, torso thrusting upwards from where he remains collapsed supine on the floor. Adam finds himself on the floor again as well, no longer pinned up by Sam’s power. The guy had obviously chosen to put him down. He gets up painfully and sees Castiel signalling for him to run, go; leave now while he can. But the dumb angel is still held fast to the wall, and he is stuck that way because he was helping Adam, so there is no way the young man is going to leave him behind. Adam stubbornly shakes his head at Castiel as he moves to stand behind Sam. He lets go of the tire iron because it isn’t working—hadn’t worked on the beanpole before, at least—but he catches sight of that knife, the big serrated one, protruding from Sam’s back pocket. It falls out as he crouches to help Dean, his energies split between steadying his older brother and keeping the angel fastened against the wall like an insect on flypaper.

Castiel’s vision is growing foggy, and colors are fading, leeching away from the edges of his vision as it begins darkening and tunneling in. He feels as though he has begun to float, which cannot be right—he had lost the ability to fly in his fall from Heaven.

Adam snatches up the knife from the floor and scrutinizes the angel with concern as Castiel’s head lolls. He mumbles and shifts ever-so-slightly, trying to complete his exorcism, Adam guesses. But the angel has been losing blood steadily from his now-busted nose and his multiple bullet wounds and appears as though he is about to faint. Adam runs through various scenarios, most of which involve him stabbing either one or both of his supposed half-brothers with the giant knife and dragging Castiel to a hospital. The rest involve him ditching the knife, somehow peeling Castiel off of the wall, and sneaking away to take him to the hospital. But he finds himself frozen right behind Sam, raising the knife to stab downward defensively just as Dean opens his eyes and draws in a ragged breath. All of Sam’s attention goes to helping his older brother get to and keep his feet, and Adam hears a loud THUMP as Castiel falls to the floor behind him. As Sam turns, Dean shoves him out of the way and pushes himself forward with a shout of “Sammy, look out!!!”

The taller Winchester stumbles to his right and Ruby’s knife sinks six inches into the flesh of Dean’s chest.


	12. Chapter Twelve.

THEN

“What happened to you, Dean? To not lettin’ your little brother become a monster?”  
“Well, if ya can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Isn’t that what they say? … Goodbye, Bobby.”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t been itchin’ to waste some angels.”

“Dean. It’s _Cas._ ” Don’t do this. Don’t be like me.

“Sam, you have...you have to stop this. Please. Let me help you and Dean go back to being human.”

NOW

 **Glendale Heights, Illinois. Seconds later.**

Dean’s mouth lifts in the ghost of a smile before a ruddy red-gold essence flickers like fire in his green eyes and under the skin behind his facial features. He glances down at the knife and then back up into Adam’s face. Adam is frozen dumbfounded as the other’s knees buckle and his body crumples to the floor. 

It is Castiel, not Sam, who shatters the silence by screaming “ _DEAN!!_ ” 

The angel moves even before Sam does to catch Dean’s body around the torso and shoulders. Adam feels horror grip him like an icy punch to the abdomen. Instead of relief at avenging the murder of his mom, the young man only feels incredible loss and utter horror at what he has just done. 

Sam has caught his older brother in his arms now and is shaking and patting Dean’s shoulders, as if those actions may wake him up. “Don’t – nonononono, come on, Dean—” but there is nothing. Naught but the dampness of blood spreading out from the place in Dean’s chest where Ruby’s knife now protrudes; nothing but the sounds of it dripping onto the floor and soaking through the cloth of Dean’s shirt. Castiel has dropped heavily beside both of the Winchesters but has not enough Grace left to heal his friend’s wound, or to call his demonic essence back… wait. Where is Dean’s soul? 

“We may still have time – if we can return Dean’s soul to his body,” the angel speaks aloud, eyes rising to meet Adam’s as he sways, weak with blood loss. He is not really seeing Adam for the moment; which is good; the young man figures, because otherwise he might be on the floor with that knife in HIS chest. Turning his head and upper body to face Sam, the angel continues: “Do you still have the soul close by, Sam?” The younger Winchester says nothing; he has frozen in shock and sorrow, head bowed, staring down at Dean. 

The shove, the knife—Sam still sees it glinting in Adam’s hand as he holds it up defensively, sees out of the corner of his eye as he had turned—and then his big brother, barely upright again, was shoving him out of the way -to protect him, always to protect Sam- and got impaled on Ruby’s blade, arms out and then going slack, and the horrible scream from Castiel, newly freed from Sam and Dean’s tortures. He sees Adam standing, frozen with a look of helpless horror widening his ocean-blue eyes. As Sam stood uselessly by to hear that inhumanly _human_ sound of pain and fear and loss ripped from the throat of the angel before reaching Dean too late, too late—the only thing he manages to do is catch the falling deadweight of his brother, gripping Dean’s arm and shoulder and jacket, shaking him desperately; begging to have been mistaken, to see those bright green orbs snap back open twinkling with mirth at a joke masterfully executed; but no, that is not happening, it cannot be….

“SAM!!” An agonized shout full of desperation that mirrors his own breaks into the Winchester’s consciousness. 

Sam’s body jerks and his head snaps up, eyes bleary and face covered with tears as he catches sight of Castiel’s also-teary eyes in his pale sweaty face. “Wh-what, Cas?” 

“Do you still have Dean’s soul? I know you took it…so it is not in Hell…”

“I— uh, yeah,” Sam clears his throat and blinks hard, swiping tears from his cheeks with one hand, smearing his brother’s blood across his own skin by doing so. “I did. It’s—we’ve got it in a box, a sigil-bound one, warded. …In the car.” 

In the car. Cas’s head snaps up in shock at that. “That…was an incredibly stupid thing to do, Sam.” His voice is fading as he remains next to Dean and stares at the other Winchester, who bows his head over his brother’s without any more words. Sam’s shoulders are shaking as Castiel curls his own arm around Dean and holds him with blood-spotted hands. “But that does not matter now. Since you have the soul, you can put it—” Before he is able to complete the sentence, the angel falls inert, his last vestiges of strength gone, landing unconscious across Dean. 

“We can put it back,” Sam says fervently, eyes wide. And then noting his friend’s prone form, he adds urgently “Cas? Cas?!” But there is no answer. 

It is just him now, him and Adam—each standing frozen staring at Dean’s and Cas’s lifeless bodies. What are they going to do? 

***

Adam drops to his knees beside the prone body of the angel. His medical instincts kick in as he checks Castiel’s neck for a pulse—it beats steadily but weakly. He has lost enough blood to knock him out. They need to stop the bleeding. Adam looks over at Dean’s soaked chest. The bleeding from both of them. Adam quickly pulls his jacket off and yanks both of his arms free, ripping his shirtsleeves at the shoulders. He pulls the angel’s coat away from his shoulder and rips one of his sleeves in half, wrapping the wound. He wishes he had some way to sterilize the cloth, but for now, this will have to do. He hesitates and holds out the other makeshift bandage to Sam, not sure he will take it. Doesn’t blame him either, but “We’re running out of time to do…whatever you’re gonna do. I know medicine; I don’t—I don’t know this.” He waves his arm around to encompass everything about what had just happened, everything about this situation as a whole. “I’m ...sorry.” His voice catches on the words. 

Sam settles his shoulders and breathes out, nostrils flaring. His eyes rise to catch Adam’s for a moment as he grabs the piece of shirt. He rips away Dean’s and presses the shirt to his still-seeping wound. 

“Wait, you—you have to pack it,” Adam says, almost apologetically as Sam stares at him with a wounded look in his eyes. “Press it into the wound, not just on top of it. That’ll help stop the bleeding. Now, uh, this…,” He turns to Cas, who remains unresponsive. His pulse still beats strongly though, which is very important. Adam moves down to check on the angel’s knee, ripping his sodden pant leg away from the afflicted area. The bullet in the angel’s knee is lodged between the patella and the meniscus, and the bleeding has not abated. Adam wonders if he can do this himself without removing the bullet, or if removing the bullet will stop the blood loss for him. But he does not have an endless supply of time here, and the area inside the knee is so small that the only way he will certainly see something -like where the blood is coming from- is to take it out. So Adam pulls Castiel’s sodden pant-leg to the side, offering a muttered apology as he straightens the angel’s leg and rests it on his own shoulder, high above Castiel’s heart. “This is really gonna hurt, Castiel,” he warns. With a deep breath whilst bracing the angel’s leg against his neck and shoulder, Adam pushes the layers of flesh and nerve-filled skin apart. 

He really wishes he had some gloves and a flashlight but luckily the lights in the house are not bad; he can see the glint of the bullet nestled on the outside of Castiel’s patellar tendon. It has torn streaks into the meniscus, which looks a bit like a rubber ball stretched around the knee joint. As Adam reaches into the flesh to remove the bullet—WHY doesn’t he carry a pair of sterilized gloves around?—the angel’s leg jerks spasmodically. 

Sam, leaning with both of his hands pressing firmly on Dean’s now not-quite-so-oozy chest wound, sucks in a sharp breath and his eyes focus on his friend’s pain-filled face. “…Cas?” 

“Got it!” Adam grunts and withdraws the slippery bullet, checking the area behind it to pinpoint the source of Castiel’s bleeding. It looks like the slug nicked one of the angel’s arteries, so the young man takes Castiel’s tie and folds it lengthwise to thicken it. He wraps the tie around Castiel’s leg just above the knee to make a tourniquet, pressing the second makeshift bandage against the knee itself. “This house got a first-aid kit?” He grunts as blood saturates the bandage and sticks to the dark hair on Cas’s leg. There is less blood now than had soaked through his pants before, however, and Adam takes that as a good sign. He finishes wrapping the shirt around the angel’s leg. 

“Here,” Sam flings himself over to a set of shelves back next to the side wall and grabs their first-aid box. Hard to believe these crazy hard-ass guys actually HAD a first-aid kit. Adam grabs a self-sticking Ace bandage and wraps it around the sticky shirt bandage. As he affixes the last length of stretchy cloth, Castiel’s eyelids flutter and then his low voice murmurs, “…That was rather unpleasant.” 

“Cas!” Sam says, relief saturating his voice. “Good to have you back.” He is truly glad to have the angel awake and conscious again. Sam begins fumbling once more with the bandage on Dean’s chest. “And I can—I can get the soul. It’s safe, I’ll bring it in—” He looks from Cas to Adam, and the angel lets out a high-pitched groan of discomfort as he moves to a sitting position and pulls himself closer to Dean. 

“Okay. Let me—let me take care of him. You must go.” Castiel grits his teeth and moves his hands in preparation and readiness to cover Dean’s chest wound and stop him from bleeding out. “Sam. Go now!” Sam tears his eyes away from the lifeless face of his older brother and catches Castiel’s eyes with his own. The manic light has all but disappeared from the younger man’s eyes, his demon blood high worn off. 

“Yeah. I—okay.” Sam pats Dean’s chest once, clears his throat, gets his feet under himself and rises, giving Castiel the space to move and press his own hands over the ragged wound in Dean’s chest. The angel hopes that he has enough power left to coax Dean’s soul back into his body though he does not possess the strength to heal his friend outright. 

Adam looks over at Castiel and Dean in concern as Sam turns and runs from the house, hair flying behind him. There is a high probability of brain death because it has been more than five minutes since Dean’s last heartbeat. Might be too late for much of anything to work, but still; the Hippocratic Oath haunts Adam’s mind—now that he has assisted Castiel, there is no reason not to do the same for Dean. Whatever his personal feelings are about the man, a medical professional cannot refuse to treat someone based on personal feelings. It is the doctor’s code. 

“Do you know CPR, Castiel?” the young man asks the angel, scooting quickly over to Dean’s other side. 

The angel’s eyes rise to meet his. “No, Adam, I’m afraid I do not.” 

“Well, if you…cup your hands slightly and lace your fingers over his chest—a little lower than where you have ‘em pressed right now, that’s it— and press all of your weight straight down, keeping your arms stiff when I give the count, we can do this in tandem.” Adam shifts himself closer to Dean’s head and tilts the Winchester’s chin upward a bit, opening his mouth gently. Positioning his right hand around Dean’s chin and with his left poised to pinch the other’s nostrils closed, Adam locks eyes with Cas. “Ready? You need to compress his chest thirty times and then I’ll do two rescue breaths. Okay? Go!” 

The angel lifts himself upright to bring his weight down on Dean, swaying sickeningly as he begins, but his hands and arms are steady as he thrusts his weight straight down, lips moving slightly as he counts to thirty. His face is intent. 

“Stop,” Adam says on the thirtieth push, and he pinches Dean’s nostrils closed, leaning down and breathing into the mouth and esophagus firmly twice. “Alright – now, thirty more compressions,” he instructs. 

Adam has just performed his third rescue breath when Dean’s younger brother returns carrying a symbol-covered… it actually looks like one of those kiddie strongboxes, similar to one he had when he was little. Adam registers this as he bends to give the fourth breath. The tall Winchester does a double-take—more like a triple-take—and then hustles over. “Here.” 

Adam moves back after the breath. “Keep pressing on his chest,” he instructs Castiel. Sam shoots the medical student a quick appraising look as the younger man curls in slightly on himself, catching his breath. He nods at Dean’s parted lips. “That should…hopefully help with… whatever you guys are doing.” 

Sam nods and murmurs something over the strongbox before he opens it, withdrawing a…is that a test tube with a stopper? Adam cannot be sure because a light ten thousand times brighter than any LED shines out of the thing. Sam clenches his teeth as he crouches next to Dean’s upper torso and reaches for the stopper. 

“Sam, wait.” Castiel reaches out and stops him. 

The Winchester looks at the angel in a panic. “Why, Cas? What’s wrong?” 

“Let me do it,” Castiel finishes. “You take hold of his head and shoulders.” 

Understanding softens the Winchester’s features. He passes the vial across his brother’s body to Cas and as the angel opens it and moves, Adam crawls closer again to continue chest compressions and, despite himself, because he feels some curiosity about whatever is about to happen, despite all of the good it likely won’t do. 

With his bright blue gaze intent and tender, the angel pours the glowing substance—can it really be a soul? Adam wonders—into his hand and siphons it gently into Dean’s mouth. Sam lifts his brother with one hand cupped around the back of his neck and the other arm putting upward pressure underneath his shoulders. “Come back to us, Dean,” Cas says firmly. He then adds quieter, his other palm pressed gently against his dead friend’s forehead, “…Come back to me.” With a sharp nod to the other Winchester he instructs: “Now, Sam.” With a grunt, Sam lifts Dean’s torso up and Adam relinquishes his chest. The last of the light disappears between Dean’s parted lips and Sam gently lowers his brother back down, still supporting his head and shoulders. 

Castiel, weak and woozy still from all of the blood loss he has sustained, slumps forward as his palm slips off of Dean’s forehead. The angel falls, again insensible, against his friend’s chest. 

There is silence. Sam hears his heart beating like thunder in his ears. Adam grabs the angel by the shoulders and then sits back, pulling the other away to get him—to give them both—some air. He grabs a bottle of alcohol from the abandoned first-aid kit and wafts its fumes under Castiel’s nose. He is both concerned for Castiel and certain they will need to get some ACTUAL help after all of this hoodoo magic is over. 

Then something brightens in Dean’s still-open eyes. Life returns to them. 

Sam gasps. “Dean?” 

***

Dean wishes he couldn’t recall the way it felt to be human. All of those …emotions. Ugh. Feelings were so friggin MESSY. 

The only thing he feels now, apart from his single-minded determination to stick with Sam and save him from the Apocalypse, is to destroy as many sonsabitches as he possibly can. To cause as much pain as possible. 

He lost it, though. He had lost it when he killed Adam’s mom. That wasn’t in any of the cards. Knifing her wasn’t doing a damn thing to keep Sammy safe. Oh, sure, that was how he JUSTIFIED what he had done—the kid was Michael’s second string to start the end of the world. But truth is, he had screwed the pooch. On that, on all of it. He did have feelings that had caused him to kill Kate Milligan, and he still has feelings now. Just no inhibitions. He is no longer human, but something else, as Ruby had warned him he would become. He hates that she was right; that losing his soul and becoming a demon makes him forget what he once had been. What it means to be human. 

Dean hears her matter-of-fact tone echo in his head; sees Ruby cock her chin knowingly and arch those perfectly thin eyebrows of hers: _The answer is ‘yes’, by the way. The same thing will happen to you. It may take centuries, but sooner or later Hell will burn away your humanity. Look at you,_ she had said. _Trying to act all stoic; it’s heartbreaking._

The kicker is that he had made it OUT of Hell. The bitch is that he did not have to go to Hell to do this to himself. No, he just couldn’t stand the possibility—or even the THOUGHT—of losing Sammy. 

And there it is. That’s what makes him the freak, the real monster of the two of them. To keep himself from losing his little brother, his whole world, he has done so much of sorrow and of evil that it can never be undone as long as he exists. Better to let his soul fly away to Heaven (or Hell, more likely) than prolong this cursed existence. Sam will be fine. Hell, Sam is always fine. He can still do good in the world without Dean. He can probably do much more good without his big brother around to screw things up. 

“Sam…,” Dean coughs and sucks in a shuddering breath. His brother’s eyes bulge and he sniffs, leaning closer as the elder coughs again. 

“Dean? Hey,” Sam smiles, teeth gleaming in a relieved grin as he leans over his big brother. “Yeah, it’s me, I’m here. What is it?” He sniffs and pushes a piece of hair back behind his ear. 

“You gotta—you gotta listen to me.” Dean swallows, bloody saliva collecting on his lips. “You’ve gotta stop this. Okay? The blood, the power—all of it.” He grimaces and begins to tear up. “I screwed up, man. …I was wrong to push ya to do this, Sammy. Screwed the pooch on all of it. I’m sorry.” Sam lets out a hiccupping sob in response and shakes his head, but Dean’s voice grows fierce. “I mean it. Tell Cas—and Bobby— tell them that I…well,” He lets out a weak chuckle before his bleary gaze wanders and drifts into the middle distance as he does his best to nod, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “You know. And—and tell the kid….”

“Hey,” Sam sniffs and clears his throat, rubs his brother’s shoulder. “It’s okay. I had a hand in it too... and you can…you’re gonna be around to tell them yourself.” But there is no answer, and Dean’s body goes slack. “Hey, hey. Dean! Don’t do this, man, c’mon… D—DEAN!!” 

His older brother’s eyes have become vacant, dark, and lifeless once again. 

As Sam and Adam watch in horror—and in Adam’s case, confusion—the thousand-watt LED floats up between Dean’s lips and disappears above them. Sam’s eyes track and follow the light’s progress. And then, as its ambient glow fades from view, a far larger one beams in all of the windows, infiltrating the shadows of the house. 

*** 

“So, uh, okay…” Adam clears his throat. “Now that all of…that happened, we need to get some actual medical help. For both of them.” Castiel lets out an inarticulate groan, as he had stirred after Adam waved alcohol-soaked cotton balls under his nose and wiped his face with a cool cloth. He had found a sink in the next room and used it while Sam was with Dean. 

Sam looks up, his eyes still teary. “We can’t get any more help for Dean. He’s—he’s gone, Adam.” 

Oh, shit. And I killed him. “I’m…I’m so sorry,” Adam says softly. 

Sam glances at him with an uncomfortable nod, but he understands that Adam really means it. He had not wanted to kill Dean the very second it happened. He had been angry, but his attempts to resuscitate the eldest Winchester prove the kid did not want Dean to die. Not to mention the initial look of horror on Adam's face when he saw what he had done. “I know. And—thanks, for what it’s worth.” It had better be worth SOMEthing because they need to keep moving forward. Their focus is Cas now. “I…I have to move him,” Sam indicates Dean’s body. “I can get him to our car. It’s on the other side of the railroad tracks for now, but—” 

“We need to get Castiel out of here,” Adam says, standing with a grunt and hauling the semi-conscious angel to his feet with arms looped under his armpits. “…preferably to a hospital. I’ll get him to his car.” 

“And I’ll meet you out front,” Sam adds with a firm nod. He looks down again at Dean and with a quick, gentle movement of his first two fingers, closes his brother’s eyes with his right hand. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter hurt me to write. I just want to say that. But I felt for the sake of the story I was telling, it had to happen. Please let me know with a comment what you think, if you agree or not. 
> 
> Ruby's words to Dean come from the end of "Malleus Malificarum" in Season 3. I have always been interested on the philosophy and literal means of becoming a demon, and think it would be cool if the show ever decided to explore that more. This was my chance to do a little bit of exploring.
> 
> On medical work: my apologies to medical professionals for the lack of sterilization Adam used to help Cas. The most important thing with a bullet wound is to stop the bleeding rather than remove the slug itself. (If removing the slug stops the bleeding, that's awesome, but it doesn't always happen.) My explanation of the interior of Castiel's knee comes from my own experience with knee injuries and surgery. Again, I apologize if the descriptions are not quite right.
> 
> On CPR: I am tired of popular culture not referencing or showing the correct way to perform CPR on someone, so I had Adam know how because as a medical student he definitely would. Rescue breaths are not recommended anymore unLESS a trained professional is giving them. It has been found that chest compressions are often a lot more effective. If you don't break a few ribs, you're not doing it right.


	13. Chapter Thirteen.

Adam hauls Castiel to a sitting position, crouching and putting the other’s arm around his shoulders. Sam moves to the other side of the fallen angel and together they manage to hoist him completely upright. Castiel sags against Adam as Sam pats his chest before gingerly letting go. “You got him?”

“Yeah,” Adam grunts, wrapping his left arm around Cas’s middle and clamping the other’s right arm around his shoulders, careful not to jiggle or bash against Castiel too much and risk reopening his shoulder gunshot wound. “Hey, Castiel, we’re gonna get you to the hospital. Just…hang on to me and step when I step, okay?”

“…Okay,” the angel murmurs blearily.

“Here we go—step. Step. That’s it.” Adam pivots towards the basement door and away from the spot Dean’s body lies. He looks over his shoulder as Sam zips up Dean’s jacket to soak up the rest of the blood and lifts his older brother in a fireman’s carry. 

Sam struggles at the back fence of the house and then again after crossing the railroad tracks to reach the Impala. He reaches the rear drivers’ side door and heaves Dean’s body inside. With a lump completely clogging his throat, Sam drapes his brother’s left arm across his chest and the other arm falls to trail its lifeless fingers on the floor; outstretched as if he is merely asleep and able to be shaken awake at any moment.

Sam clears his throat and closes the car door carefully. Baby is positioned so as not to draw undue attention, and if anyone happens to glance inside whilst walking by, Dean looks as though he is conked out in the back. If only. Sam wipes his eyes and locks the car, slapping one hand flat on its roof. He lets out a long shaky breath, pushes back his hair, settles his shoulders, and heads back to wipe down the basement and to help Cas. Dean would never forgive him if he doesn’t help after everything the angel did to help THEM out…. "Don't worry, Dean," Sam promises his brother. "I'm gonna make sure Cas is okay. That we'll...all be okay." The words catch in his throat as he speaks them, for how can he ever be truly okay again now that his brother is gone? Nevertheless, he will try and keep on trying.

***

Adam Milligan is having a difficult time. It is HARD to carry an angel who is practically dead weight, despite his feeble attempts to help haul himself through the house. Adam really hopes they do not run into an early-bird neighbor heading out for the trash or the paper. How in the hell could he possibly even BEGIN to explain what is going on with them? Oh yeah – this guy that he is carrying is an angel who took Adam to confront the demon that killed his mother. That demon is his eldest brother, (well, half-brother that he had only recently learned about) whom he stabbed in the chest and killed; but he was able to –sort of– patch the angel up and has now joined forces with the brother of the deceased demon—his OTHER half-sibling—to bring this woozy powerless angel to the nearest emergency room. Oh and they just had a knock-down drag-out torturous fight in a suburban basement. Yeah, Adam really needs to get his head examined.

Did he actually witness someone’s soul going up to Heaven, or to wherever it went…? he does not know whether or not he believes in that; truthfully, Adam is not sure WHAT he believes anymore.

Shoving open the front door and carefully navigating the trio of steps down to the driveway, Adam now wonders how he is going to wrest Castiel’s car keys out of his coat. As he is debating that and whether he can nudge the angel into a state of enough consciousness to give the keys to him, Sam runs up, winded. Adam shifts the angel’s weight into the larger man’s arms after shooting him an appraising look. The young man then fishes around in the pockets of the trench coat, dealing with salt and blood and other crap before finally latching on to the keys. “I hope you know where the nearest hospital is, Sam,” he snaps. The unspoken words: _You’d better because it’s your fault he’s going there—yours and Dean’s—_ hang in the air between them as Adam unlocks the Lincoln and eases Castiel onto the back seat with gentle hands. “But I’m driving.”

Sam nods. “Fair enough; I’ve gotten pretty good at giving directions over the years. Better safe than sorry.” His voice is gentle and sincere without any trace of the mania that had characterized him earlier during their battle.

Closing the door after Castiel and not letting his guard down at all, Adam goes around to the drivers’ side and nods shortly. “Good. I’ll be using my GPS to double-check you. Like you said—better safe than sorry.”

***

**Hospital in Glendale Heights.**

The hospital they make it to is in Glen Oaks, what would probably be described as a borough of Glendale Heights. Luckily there aren’t that many people entering the place at this hour, although the sun is now up and morning rush hour has started by the time they pull off the main road and into the parking lot. As Adam pulls the car into an empty space, he wonders what they can say about Castiel to the doctors. He has a feeling people don’t just happen to get shot in Glendale Heights early in the morning. He highly doubts they can pull off a home invasion story, because what kind of person would believe Castiel was a robber, never mind the fact that what kind of guys would shoot an intruder and then bring him in to get medical attention? He glances over at Sam, wondering if the big man has any ideas percolating in his brain, or if he is going to get all amped up on…whatever he had been on during their fight.

Sam feels the other’s eyes on him and looks down; head bobbing a bit before he raises his eyes to Adam’s and runs a hand through his hair. “I can, uh, put Cas on our insurance,” he says. Adam blinks. Sam rushes to clarify: “I mean—we have a couple of insurance cards, me and Dean. I can say Castiel’s my brother so we don’t…attract suspicion.”

Adam stares him down. “Or I can say he’s my father on my _legitimate_ insurance card. Mom put Dad’s name down, and since she’s…dead, I’m the only one who can confirm it.” He does not say that he will not be taking chances with all-fake information, but it’s there in his facial expression. “Plus, this whole thing…,” Adam bounces up and down a little in his seat. “It’s my fault. My responsibility. I was the one who told Castiel to take me to the person who killed my mom.” He looks at the angel in the rearview mirror. Castiel is slumped against his seatbelt and the door, and Adam unbuckles his own belt and sighs, opening the driver’s door. “So that’s…on me.” He is grateful for the angel and all of his help and attempted help. The awkward attempts at comfort included, as well as stopping on the road to get Adam snacks when angels do not even need to eat. Though with all the blood loss and human crap now happening, Adam wonders if he should have made the angel eat food at some point before their dinner at El Tesoro.

Never mind any of that now. Sam has gotten out as well and both open and pull Castiel from the car. “Put your arm around my neck,” the tallest man instructs. Adam quickly shuffles to the angel’s other side as Castiel looks first at Sam and then at Adam as he complies with Sam's words, his skin pale and blue eyes cloudy.

“Hang on just a little longer, Castiel,” Adam locks the car and his elbow juts outwards as he stuffs its keys into his left jacket pocket before nodding at Sam to start walking. “Move with us,” he instructs and they begin to cross the cracked concrete of the parking lot they had entered. 

Adam glances at the sign near the lot’s exit as the three head up a slight incline to the ER entrance on the left. Ambulances are pulling up in front of the double doors in a turnaround lane, their sirens wailing. Long-term doctors’ offices are to the right. Men and women in scrubs pass the three men going both ways—obviously focused on matters of great importance because not one of them exhibits concern or shock or says “Oh my God, this man’s been shot twice!” Of course, medical professionals are trained to act calmly, but Adam wishes that just one person would have a genuine HUMAN reaction to all—or any—of this crap. He feels as though he has forgotten what that even sounds like.

The double doors open automatically and the woozy angel’s gaze focuses on that movement. “Fascinating. Do the doors possess angelic power?”

“Uh, no. They run on a motion sensor, Castiel.”

The angel nods weakly. “Ah.”

Adam looks over at Sam in disbelief and the Winchester lets out a huff of breath, seeming both fond and amused. “That’s Cas.” Sam then focuses on people moving around the waiting room: a pregnant woman with a clearly abnormal protuberance is being taken back; several seemingly-worse-for-wear college kids sit holding limbs and faces awkwardly, one looks passed out. Several people appear to be waiting for spouses or family members – there is a tearful boy with a broken arm whose parents are waving to him as he is led away by a nurse. The receptionist looks exhausted already. Sam rushes over to her as Adam holds onto Castiel. The Winchester man’s eyes are wide with panic and his hair is flying. “Excuse me, ma’am—”

“I’ll be right with you. External or internal?” She holds a phone to her ear.

“Uhh,” Sam looks around, helpless. “Both? My friend’s been shot and he’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Okay. It’ll be at least a forty-minute wait. Here is some paperwork for him to fill out.”

Sam stares at the clipboard she holds out to him whilst speaking into the phone: “Yes, I need to check on Dr. Hauser’s availability.” She then mouths to the Winchester “Do you need a pen?”

“I—no,” Sam’s eyes are growing wider with disbelief and his lips purse as one hand comes up, fingers outstretched to stop her. He opens his mouth and does his best to smile and speak calmly, but his voice is shaking. “I don’t think you understand. My friend has been SHOT—”

The woman covers the phone’s receiver. “I understand, sir, but he needs to fill out the forms on his medical history and proof of insurance. There are procedures, and the wait doesn’t just go away.” She cuts her eyes sideways as she looks at her computer screen and adds “I’m sorry that you’re upset, but there just aren’t any rooms available right now.” She nods at a row of chairs along the wall. “You can sit down over there with your friend.”

“But—” He is desperate, and she is tired.

Closing her eyes and taking her hand away from the phone to continue her conversation, she says “Please sit down, sir.”

Adam pulls on Sam’s sleeve gingerly, half-expecting the other to scream and use his powers to slam Adam, the receptionist, and everyone else into the walls of the waiting room. “Let’s just…do what she says, Sam.” 

“Yes.” Castiel wavers from where he leans heavily against the receptionist’s desk. “I will…I will be fine.”

That statement is so incredibly untrue and odd for Castiel to say, as someone who barely understands the small fictions humans tell each other to keep each other's spirits up. Much less has he ever said something like that before. Sam wants to laugh but if he starts laughing he will likely start to cry. It’s just like Dean was always saying: _“Don’t worry, Sammy. I’ll be fine. Quit it with the sad-puppy eyes, okay?”_ His brother would’ve probably sweet-talked the receptionist into finding them a room by now, grinning that giant Dean grin that somehow makes people go weak at the knees. God, Sam wishes he were here. He clears his throat and picks the clipboard up, going over to Cas to help him reach a seat. “Okay.” They limp over to the chairs, Adam holding one of the angel’s arms as Sam holds his sides and turns Cas to ease him into one. “Careful, Cas. Easy.” The angel does his best to brace his hands on the thin metal armrests but drops into the seat heavily nonetheless, letting out a small yelp. Sam sighs and wrinkles his face as he looks at the medical information and insurance forms. “Guess we have to write something on this.”

“Here,” Adam fumbles in his wallet and hands over his insurance card. He lets go the instant Sam takes it with hazel eyes wide.

“Adam, are you sure?”

Adam shrugs his coat off and shifts his feet. “Sure. The card’s legitimate, so he’s more likely to get service because they know he can pay for it.” The young man rolls up his jacket and puts it behind Castiel to cushion the seat for him before sticking his wallet back into his pocket and sitting down a seat away from the angel. Sam swallows, nods, and bends over the insurance form with the card in his hand.

Castiel swivels his head to focus on Adam and says “Thank you.” He looks directly into the young man’s eyes. The other nods and looks closely at the angel’s pallid features. The paleness and dryness of Castiel’s lips is bothering him, so Adam looks around for a water bubbler. The angel teeters and slumps sideways as he does so. 

“Whoa, whoa, hey!” Sam drops the pages of paperwork and puts a steadying hand on Castiel’s chest as Adam leans over and grabs the back of the angel’s coat.

“My apologies,” the angel mumbles.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Adam rolls his eyes in exasperation at the angel's ridiculousness. “You’re friggin’ _woozy_ ; it’s not your fault!”

Sam adds softly “It’s okay, Cas.”

The Milligan man stands up and goes to find some water for the angel. He returns with a paper cup to find Sam finished with all of the paperwork and Castiel dozing in his chair. Not wanting to wake the angel up, but monitoring his pulse as he breathes, Adam shuffles from foot to foot and then thrusts the cup of water at Sam. “Here. You should…stay hydrated too.”

Sam accepts the cup and gesture with a surprised stare and a stuttering “Th-thanks.” Adam nods uncomfortably and sits back down on Castiel’s other side, averting his eyes from the Winchester as quickly as possible. Not only does his mind keep flashing back to Sam’s sniggering assertion that he was a kid in way over his head, but seeing a…for lack of a better term, Sith-like type of power that pinned him and Castiel to walls, immobile; but he had killed Sam’s brother. HIS brother too, and even unintended, he and Sam cannot go back from that. And Castiel has not said anything yet, but Adam suspects at some juncture the angel will become angry with him for killing his friend. Heavenly being or not, that has got to burn – especially since Castiel was the one who brought Adam along, protecting him the entire time.

But now it seems that Castiel requires protecting; as far as Adam can see, the angel had used the last of his failing power to do that LED-dumping thing he’d tried on Dean, which of course hadn’t worked. And there is no way to tell how long he has left after losing so much blood, and—damn it, Adam is going to make this angel drink fluids. Hydration equals a much easier time getting to veins for blood transfusions. 

Adam returns to the water bubbler and paper-cup dispenser that is down the hall. He fills a flimsy paper cone full of icy liquid. Stomping back to the row of seats along the wall and pushing back his beanie in irritation, the young man plops down into the empty chair next to Castiel, holding out the water. “Psst! Hey, hey angel. Open your fucking mouth and drink this.”

***

Castiel hates this. He hates feeling so weak and far away, so fragile and utterly useless. It was unpleasant enough feeling pain, but now that the agony is over, he just feels cold. Not in the angelic fashion, either—this is a chill that is far deeper and stronger. It catches at his extremities and seeps into his core, sapping his strength, his energy, his very wakefulness. He has never needed to sleep, nor been able to; but now he cannot seem to keep his vessel conscious. Not simply his vessel, either—Castiel cannot remain awake himself. _Cas!_ He waits to hear that shortened version of his name, called by the first voice to ever speak it; to hear _You beautiful son of a bitch, you did it! Now c’mon, you’re not winkin’ out on me now._ But he does not hear that, and the light reflecting on the floor is bright, so bright, but it is not clear. Not clear like the soul of Dean, his best friend, the righteous man he had gripped tight and raised from Perdition… where is he? Dean—and then a hand grips his shoulder and a voice pierces through the unnatural quiet that turns to a roaring sound in his ears— “----angel. Open your fucking mouth----drink,”

Castiel’s eyes snap open wide, but the eyes staring intently at him are not Dean’s. A much younger man with light blue eyes and messy dirty-blond hair, straight nose with a small scar making a divot in one side…the sharp tone of voice and direct fierceness in his gaze are both like Dean… but no. This is, this is Adam. The young man he drove with. The son whose mother was killed; the boy who wanted revenge, but needed closure. Did he get any at all? Castiel wonders, and parts his lips to ask, but Adam lifts a cup to them and holds it there for him. “Drink this, Castiel. It’s water.” Obediently the angel gulps and swallows, and then Adam is gone; replaced in what seems like an instant by Sam, gazing at him with mussed hair and sad hazel eyes.

“How’re you feeling, Cas? A doctor will hopefully be out to get you a room soon.”

“Sam, I am glad you are here, but where is Dean?” the angel starts to say, but before he can finish the first half of that question, Adam returns with more water for him and puts a hand on the back of Castiel’s neck to hold him steady. The angel gulps again thirstily. He has never tasted anything as refreshing as this water is, touching his tongue and sliding down his throat; relieving discomfort he had not realized he still felt; replenishing his energy. He wants – no, he NEEDS more. 

Sam has gone from staring at Adam with skeptically-raised eyebrows on the other man’s initial instruction for Castiel to drink, to now rushing over to get water for Cas himself, filling multiple cups. They should get him a water bottle or something. And then, miracle of miracles, a nurse comes out of the closest swinging door and calls “Milligan? Um,” She looks down at the paperwork Sam had filled out and given back to the receptionist. “Adam Milligan and family?”

Adam blinks hard as he stands. His name had been the one on the insurance card, of course, and he had already said he would pass Castiel off as his father, but hearing the three of them lumped together like that when he is still trying to reconcile Sam being his brother, not to mention Dean…. Well, he has a hard time swallowing and moving to speak with the nurse. But he does manage to tell Castiel they are moving and Sam helps the angel up, bracing the shorter being’s side against his own and feeling the angel shiver against him as they step into the long corridor behind the swinging doors. 

The emergency room is bisected by a nurses’ station slightly to the left of where the three men and nurse come in. Scales and stretchers and wheelchairs are along the walls to left and right; before them beds on wheels are separated from each other by blue curtains hanging from ceiling tracks. Blocks of I.V. lines, breathing apparatuses, and heart monitors beep and hiss and blink with intermittent lights. Other nurses, doctors, and PAs in scrubs are rushing to and fro—pushing crash carts and carrying clipboards and calling for so many C.C.s of saline. This cacophony Adam knows how to deal with; he tunes out all of it except for the voice of the nurse he is speaking to, turning to help Sam get Castiel to stand on the scale indicated before removing his arms. 

The angel holds still on his feet for zero point five seconds and then crumples. Adam catches his weight with a grunt and stands him back up as Sam watches helplessly, eyes wide with worry. “What is this man’s condition?” the nurse enquires.

Sam whips his head around and stares incredulous, eyes widening even more, brows lowering, and lips pursing. “Are you seriously asking—?”

Adam rattles off quickly: “Two gunshot wounds, one through the right pectoral and deltoid muscles. Clean through-and-through wound. Second shot to the left patella, tearing the lateral meniscus. Was lodged internally but got removed. He’s suffering severe dehydration and sustained wooziness from blood loss.”

The nurse blinks and Sam stares in impressed shock at the younger man, who ignores him. “Blood type?” The nurse asks.

“I don’t know that,” Adam responds.

“Well we will get him on fluids first and then we can bring in the phlebotomy team.” The nurse caps her pen after writing on Castiel’s chart and puts the clipboard to her chest, turning and peering at beds in between curtains. “I’ll get his height down after we find him a room, be easier to measure if he isn’t wobbling around on his feet and possibly losing more blood. This way.”

Castiel still feels as though he is floating, but less high. He is grateful to be anchored to Sam and Adam both as they follow the nurse. The angel knows he must ask her name at some point, in order to thank her. They get to a curtained bed at the far end of the left-side of the corridor. Radiology and x-ray rooms are on the opposite wall. A bathroom is just down and to the right, the nurse informs them. “I will not need to use them,” the angel assures her as Sam helps him to the side of the bed, starting to lift up his legs—being as careful as he can of Cas’s left knee—

“Hold on, don’t move,” the nurse suddenly snaps. “We need a stretcher over here! Stat!” Another nurse in flowery scrubs and a third, tall and wearing dark blue, come over with a flat board stretcher that they place alongside Castiel and then against his back. “We’re going to flip him back—one, two, three!” With all three of the nurses’ combined strength, the angel is stretched out onto the board and then carefully shifted onto the bed.

“How did this happen?” one of the nurses asks, looking in turn at each of the three men. 

“Uh…”

“We were in Chicago,” Sam speaks up. Because where else around here would they be getting shot at? What area would make sense? Not Gary, certainly. Too far away. And Glendale Heights is a nice area, too nice for gun violence... “Visiting a friend.” Sam winces. Even talking obliquely about Dean hurts. “…It happened so quickly. We—we were on the South Side, and it was just…” he swallows, trying to say the quickest thing that will give information that is both pertinent and believable, because of course they cannot tell the truth. They can never tell the truth.

“It was a random act of violence,” Adam finishes quietly, his voice flat. Sam shoots the other man a sharp look. Adam stares back, daring the Winchester to deny or contradict what he had said. Sam doesn’t. It is easier this way; much easier. Better to pin the angel’s wounds on an unknown assailant than to admit the shooter was the victim’s best friend, who shot Cas to see if he could feel the pain. Then they would have to say the shooter was now dead…. Thinking of Dean like that makes Sam’s stomach begin to churn. He can hardly think with the hospital noise assailing his ears – not only the beeping of machines, but ringing phones and the damned intercom repeatedly going off…he swallows his retort along with his bile and helps Castiel sit up in the bed. 

Cas groans in discomfort as he is forced to put weight on his injured leg as he shifts, and then collapses back against the pillow, sweating profusely. It is strange to see him exhibiting human sensations of pain. Strange and heartbreaking. The first nurse, the one who led them to this bed—she introduces herself as Melissa—tells one of the others to bring an I.V. cart and pole, along with at least two bags of saline.

Adam leans against the wall and watches as another nurse, the third one, a tall young man whose name badge reads ‘JEREMY’, walks over to Castiel’s left side.

The second nurse, Victoria, rolls an I.V. cart over. She picks up a needle and hands it to Jeremy. He extends Castiel’s arm and flicks a finger against one of the veins on the interior of the angel’s elbow to make it stand up.

“Flex for me, buddy. There ya go.” He smiles at the dark-haired being encouragingly and then asks “What’s your name?”

“…I am Castiel,” the angel says. The nurse nods as Sam does his best to mask a wince. He had not warned Cas they needed to be discreet, and to do that he should have probably said his name was John since he was supposedly Adam’s father. And the angel had been out of it for the entirety of their ‘to use or not to use the real insurance card’ discussion… It’s too late now, though. Can’t be helped as the nurse tapes a fluid tube up the length of the angel’s forearm.

“Good to meet you, Casteel. I’m Jeremy.” He takes a look at the angel’s shoulder and then his knee, whistling slightly and shaking his head. “Man, I like extreme sports as much as the next guy, but gunplay is something even I consider to be too much.” He hooks Cas’ tube to a bag of saline and hangs it up on an IV pole. Snapping off his rubber gloves and grabbing a fresh pair, he looks over at the female nurse who’d brought them in. “Anything else I need to do for him at the mo’, Melissa?”

“Check his blood type for phlebotomy,” she says. “I’ll grab Shelley for the pain meds. We need to do a CDC.” 

Jeremy nods and turns to the cart behind him. Other tools to assist in intravenous work, inserting catheters, attaching cannulas, et cetera rest there; he picks up a plunger to take blood and says “I hate to do this to ya, Casteel, since you’ve lost so much blood already, but can I have a finger? We’ve got to check what your blood type is.” 

Castiel, who has some color back in his face now from the saline hydration, squints at the other and pales in concern. He twists his hand and hisses in pain as the tensing of muscles pulls at his I.V. line. “I would rather you not remove one of my fingers, please, Jeremy.”

“…Remove? What—?”

“He’s going to stab a little hole in your skin to take some blood, but you get to keep your finger, Castiel.” Adam gently assures the angel. Castiel looks at the young man and nods before slowly extending his fingers. “He’s a little out of the loop on medical …everything,” the former medical student explains.

“But clearly you’re not,” remarks the nurse. "You know the lingo. I heard what you told Melissa after you all came in here. Impressive." Adam nods. “You take medical classes or something?”

“I was in med school, yeah,” says Adam. “Wanted to be a surgeon.”

“Past-tense, huh? What about now?”

“It’s… things are different, I guess. My – circumstances have changed.” Adam shrugs and shuffles his feet slightly. “My mom was a nurse, so I think I would make a decent EMT maybe, but…it’s tough right now, because she’s— gone.” The catch in his voice when he speaks the word ‘gone’ allows for no misunderstanding of what that means. 

She’s dead and so is Dean, and Adam feels as though he is going into a tailspin. Vengeance, knowing why his mom was murdered, none of that changes the fact that she is gone and is never coming back. But he has to move on from that. He has to live his life as best he can.

The nurse nods at him. “As long as you know what you want,” he says. "That's the most important thing." Turning back to Castiel, “Don’t worry, it’s just a pinch,” Jeremy reassures. “And then—” He clamps the angel’s index finger and then presses upward towards the tip. Beads of blood drip out and saturate the small sterile tab. Jeremy fills and puts it into a test tube before smiling at Castiel. “We’ll send this upstairs to the lab and get your type ASAP. Hang in there.” He re-gloves his hands and puts one on the angel’s good shoulder. Castiel’s mouth flattens and he blinks in silent thanks. Then the tallest nurse leaves and Victoria takes his place to check Cas’s vitals and saline level. 

She moves the second bag close. “He’s going through this fast,” she said. Melissa asks whether or not the patient is resting comfortably and then gently re-situates his pillow for him. Then she walks over and touches Adam on the arm as Sam moves, pulling up a chair to sit close beside Cas.

“May I talk to you for a minute?” Melissa asks Adam.

“Uh…sure,” he stands up from the wall where he had been leaning. Sam’s eyes follow Adam and he nods, slightly awkwardly, as the younger moves outside of Castiel’s curtain to face the nurse.

“Med school huh? Even before Jeremy asked, I could tell you know what you’re doing. You’ve had practical training – and you know how insurance companies work, yeah?”

Adam nods after a second of hesitation. Might as well admit what is obvious to her. He figures he knows what she is going to ask him next. 

The nurse settles her shoulders and her chocolate-brown eyes stare serenely at him. “I’m going to level with you. Adam, right?” He nods. “I know that man in there is not your father. But I also know that you care about him enough to get treatment, so there is nothing for the insurance company to flag because there is nothing we need to tell them. You get me?”

Adam is baffled by her acceptance of this. What he is doing is classified as FRAUD - but he nods. “Yes. Yes, I do, Nurse Melissa. …Thanks,” he adds sincerely.

The expression in her eyes is soft. “It’s not a problem. I understand.” She pats his arm again and adds “I’ll get a rush on that bloodwork, okay? You can go ahead back in.”

“Okay,” Adam nods and scuffs his foot on the tile ever-so-slightly. “Thank you again.” She smiles at him as he pushes the curtain aside and ducks back in.

***

Castiel looks up from his bed as Adam re-enters the room, his eyes a clear alert blue for the first time since he had held Dean’s soul in his hands. His eyes move from one man to the other as Sam shifts in the chair he sits in. “Adam, Sam.” The angel gazes around, tipping his head and upper body slightly forward. “Where…where is Dean?”

Dean. The two half-brothers look at one another. He doesn’t realize or remember. Oh, no. Lips trembling, Sam reaches out and puts a hand on Castiel’s shoulder as Victoria busies herself refilling his saline and then leaves. The angel looks down at the Winchester’s hand, resting firmly upon his arm the way Dean’s used to do. And he knows, even before Sam clears his throat and says “Cas –” His heart drops and a chasm opens.

“I failed him,” the angel closes his eyes tightly and clenches both of his fists around the material of the blanket on his bed. “…I failed you both.”

“No,” Sam responds fiercely, his voice louder than either of the others expects. Adam jumps and Castiel’s eyes snap back open, though he doesn’t look directly at the Winchester man. “No, don’t say that. You – you _saved_ us, Cas. You did. And you brought Dean peace.” He chokes up. “I…I saw it…in his eyes when he—when he said goodbye to me.” Sam blinks back tears and does his best to smile at his friend. “And, uh, you showed me the wrong we’d been doing. That I’d been doing. I was—” Sam swallows, seeming nauseated as he rolls his lips, looking down before bobbing his head, working his jaw, and raising his eyes to catch Adam’s and then Cas’s again. “I was running from the Apocalypse. We both were. But—but using that power…,” his nerve starts to fail, but he pushes through. He has to say this. “It didn’t help us. At all.” Leaning forward, the Winchester grabs onto Castiel’s hand, squeezing it. The angel’s eyes snap to his in shock. “But you never stopped trying to help us, Cas. You didn’t give up.” He shakes the other’s arm to accentuate the words, voice wobbling but gaze steady. Sam sucks in a deep breath through his nose, nostrils flaring. “And I am so grateful for that.” He lets go of Castiel’s hand, pats it, and clears his throat. “And I know—I know Dean would be too. I know that he WAS.” Sam gives his head a little shake and looks into the angel’s eyes. “Never doubt that, okay? You helped us. You saved us.”

Castiel closes his eyes and lets out a tiny sigh.

“…Don’t forget you also saved my ass,” Adam says. “Incredibly stupid how you stepped in front of me and took _both of those bullets_ , but hey. You’re an angel, right? That's just how you roll.” The young man shrugs as gratitude lights up his face. 

A split-second smile lights up Castiel’s eyes and then the male nurse returns from the lab.

“You must be one lucky guy, Casteel,” Jeremy says brightly. “You’re AB positive!” Castiel’s face is blank and he squints and cocks his head with confusion. “Means you can get any type of blood from a transfusion and it won’t react badly with your body.” He jerks his head back in the direction whence he came. “Melissa’s checking on donors to see if we have some blood in for after we get you an x-ray, maybe an MRI, see how much damage that bullet did to your knee. If we’ve got—”

“I’ll donate blood to him,” Sam offers, instantly rolling up his plaid sleeve and baring his forearm.

Adam bobs his head once and adds from where he stands at the foot of the bed, “Same here.”

Jeremy looks from one man to the other. “You’ve got good friends here,” he tells the angel.

Castiel looks up at Sam, who sits beside him with hazel eyes warm and clear; the last of the demon blood has departed his system by now. And then he looks to Adam, who had moved and now stands at the bedside opposite from the Winchester. His expression is focused and kind. The angel reflects upon how incredibly, undeservedly lucky he is to have these humans in his life – who do not believe he had failed, but brought peace to and rescued them instead. “I am incredibly lucky,” he tells the nurse solemnly. “Perhaps they are…a little rough around the edges,” He thinks of Dean especially and smiles. “But these are the best men I have ever known.” Reaching out to Sam and Adam, the angel puts one of his hands on each of their closest arms.

Sam smiles, ducking his head as he pats his friend's fingers. Adam looks at the angel and nods. “Thank you, Castiel.”

The nurses all smile at this little tableau as the three men wait quietly together for whatever else may come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last this story is done! Thanks as always go to the creator, actors, producers, and everyone involved in the TV show Supernatural for making this possible. 
> 
> The area in which the hospital is located is based on an actual hospital in Glen Oaks, Illinois. However, I have not personally been to that particular hospital, and so my descriptions are based on a medical center in my North Carolina hometown.
> 
> Again, I apologize if my medical information is not perfect - I write about the emergency room from my own experiences before and after several surgeries I went through years ago. I must sincerely and profusely thank every nurse, doctor, and medical professional who has ever made me feel safe and explained exactly what was going to happen to me while I was in the hospital.
> 
> I hope that readers enjoyed this. Feel free to let me know with a comment what you think. :) 
> 
> Of course Sam will have to take Dean's body to Bobby, deal with demon blood withdrawal, get to know his younger half-brother... and what happens afterwards is anyone's guess. If readers want to know what happens, please let me know and I will be glad to add a little more.


End file.
